It's About Time
by Doverstar
Summary: Phineas, Ferb, and the whole gang are in for some depressing trouble when their time-stream science project goes haywire. Suddenly they are thrust into all kinds of eras! Worse, if they put a foot wrong, each of their futures could be altered! What happens if they decide to change their own fates? How do they escape? Read to find out! Detailed reviews are appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

**(I'm finally flippin' doing it! I'm writing another chapter-by-chapter Phineas and Ferb: Reinventing High School fanfic after weeks of stinkin' writer's block! Yes! I hope you guys like this one about as much as the Golden ones {as I like to call them} such as _Things Left Unsaid _and _Wherever I Go_. And it's one where I have no idea how this might turn out...happy reading! And I need some long feedback! And if you haven't read my other fanfics in this order: _Always, Shattered, Wherever I Go, Dare, Not Alone, Higher, Unspoken, Ocean Wide, Just So You Know, _and _Summer Love_, you probably won't understand who the OCs are. Detailed reviews, of course. Enjoy _It's About Time_.)**

* * *

Summertime. Normally in Danville, this was the ultimate 4 months of some serious fun for all ages. Danville was bigger than Disneyworld in summer. And it was all due to two miraculously-gifted teenagers and their friends currently residing in the town, bent on making the world a little brighter, one invention at a time.  
Normally this would be the time of local civilians' lives.

Normally.

But today as Isabella Garcia Shapiro strolled down the street, she noticed there was no activity in the Flynn-Fletchers' backyard. No construction noises from Ferb Fletcher or endless chatter from her best friend and boyfriend Phineas Flynn.

She peeked over the fence. No wonder. They weren't even back there.

Then, before she could step away from the fence, a hand grabbed her arm and yanked her down to a crawling position on the sidewalk.

"Hey!" Isabella shrieked. "What's..."

The hand let go of her arm and clamped itself over her mouth.

Isabella's startled blue eyes rose and she immediately relaxed, swatting the hand away as she recognized its owner. "Galan? What are you doing here?"

16-year-old Galan Walker, with his thick-yet-perfectly-cut jet black hair and blue T-shirt with thin white stripes, glanced down at her with a freckled face dancing with merriment. He was in the army-crawl position beside her. "Shh!" He put a finger to his mouth. He was wearing the usual khaki shorts that came several inches below his knees. His sandals were scuffed on the pavement.

Usually Galan lived on the outskirts of Danville, where his extra-super-rich parents owned the Tropical Resort. He didn't have many friends, save for Phineas, Ferb, Buford Van Stomm, Baljeet Rai, Isabella herself, and a few others. Why? Most teens his age treated him poorly because of his wealth. They believed he'd brag, flaunt his good fortune, and become a general pain in the lowly-commoner neck. They didn't get to see what an incredibly sweet guy he was, and how hard he tried to prove them wrong.

"What's going on?" Isabella whispered.

"Arm yourself, little lady," Galan said in a Southern accent, pretending to tip his invisible cowboy hat to her, arching a brow. He passed her a violet water gun. "This here's war."

"Do _not _squirt me," Isabella warned, scrambling to her feet.

Galan jumped up and glanced around. "Sh!"

"Lose the accent and explain," Isabella giggled.

"Town water-gun fight." Galan hissed in his normal voice. "Phineas and Ferb organized it."

"Are there teams?"

"I like how you think," Galan grinned. "But it's everybody for themselves unless you form an alliance. And I have." He turned on her, pointing his water pistol at her. "And you're not in it."

Isabella shrieked and took a few steps back, pinned against the fence. She held up her gun and fired. It was empty!

Galan got a mischievous look on his face. He stepped toward her and prepared to squirt.

Suddenly a nice, steady stream of water sloshed his face, causing Galan to splutter in surprise and stagger aside.

16-year-old Phineas Flynn dropped down in front of Isabella, vaulting over the fence. He wore his white T-shirt with orange stripes over a long-sleeved red torso and blue jeans with blue-and-white converse shoes.

"Phineas!" Isabella cheered, pulling herself away from the fence.

Phineas grinned at her over his shoulder and she got weak in the knees like always. The redhead pointed a massive-looking water gun at Galan, who was standing off to the side, rubbing water out of his eyes.

"Put your hands in the air and step away from my girlfriend," Phineas said in an ominous voice, as a cop would do to a drunk driver. He was still smiling.

Galan raised his eyebrows and shook his black bangs. He pulled out his own gun to defend himself, still dripping wet.

Over the fence came Ferb Fletcher, 17 years old and completely ready to do some soaking, holding out a purple gun similar to Phineas' and preparing to shoot at Galan as well. Ferb was wearing a purple jacket and gray pants, along with black-and-white shoes.

"We've got 'im cornered, bro!" Phineas crowed.

Ferb nodded.

Suddenly he was hit from behind with a water balloon. Ferb staggered and lost his balance, dropping to the ground.

When he moved, he reveal Valia Toir, a 16-year-old girl with short, shoulder-length, curled-with-a-curling-iron-at-the-ends blonde hair and a large, floppy purple hat over the light-colored locks. Her cream-colored skin was dotted with few freckled and she wore a purple shirt with green sleeves and green cotton pants, along with space-age white boot-like shoes with green-and-purple strips across them. Valia was a perky, hyperactive old friend of Galan's; his best friend since they'd been 9 years old. She lived outside Danville in a town not far from it, and visited as often as she could.

"Tag! You're it," teased Valia.

"I was under the impression we weren't _playing _tag," Ferb muttered.

"Don't be a sourpuss," Valia snickered. "I hit you fair and square."

"From behind," Isabella corrected.

"That's foul play!" Phineas added, still grinning.

"Hate to interrupt, but I'd like to make a break for it." Galan glanced at Valia. "Shall we?"

"Oh yes, let's," Valia retorted.

The two of them took off down the street.

"What now?" Isabella asked. "Don't squirt me yet, I'm on empty!"

Phineas turned around and took her water gun from her, examining it. "As fun as this thing is," he said slowly, "there's always room for improvement. Ferb?"

Ferb pulled out a pink version of the gun he and Phineas had. He handed it to Isabella and tossed her previous pistol over his shoulder.

Isabella observed her new weapon with a determined, ready-for-action look. "Cool!"

"It's full of water and perfect to do some damage. Care to be on our team?" Phineas raised an eyebrow at her.

"My pleasure," giggled Isabella.

Phineas beamed, then turned to his stepbrother. "Okay, Ferb, let's get ready to..."

A figure whipped past them, grabbed Phineas' shirt collar, and shoved his back against a tree, pushing the end of their water gun to his throat menacingly.

"_Autumn_?" Isabella was surprised.

Autumn Karmer, age 16, had Phineas pinned against the tree and was watching Ferb and Isabella with adrenaline in her otherwise-playful hazel eyes. She had caramel-colored hair and wore a gray hoodie jacket with silver pants that had violet cuffs around her ankles. On her feet were black-and-white converse shoes, much like the ones Ferb wore.

"One step closer and the inventor gets it!" Autumn warned.

Phineas blinked, a bit startled.

Ferb froze at that. Isabella followed his lead.

"So he gets wet, so what?" Isabella whispered to him. "We can get her if we want to."

Ferb shook his head dramatically, eyes on Phineas. "Everyone has 10 'lives', so to speak," he said softly in his British accent, "and if you get hit, you have to regroup and sit out for 10 minutes in your backyard. When you've lost all your lives, you're out of the war." He narrowed his gaze. "And Phineas is on his 7th. We can't afford to lose him from our team for more than 5 minutes, let alone 10."

It was the most she'd heard him say all week.

"So what do we do?"

"Surrender quietly," suggested a scratchy voice behind them.

Isabella whipped around. 17-year-old Cody Bannister already had his water gun out, a Nerf Super-Soaker, and was pointing it right at her.

Cody was a teen with brown, messy hair, large amber eyes, and thick brown eyebrows usually sunk low over his eyes. He wore his black leather jacket over a red T-shirt with a golden $ sign over it, ripped-below-the-knees gray jeans, and red converse shoes.

"Hi, Cody," Isabella said.

"Hey, Izzie. Hands up."

Isabella glanced at Ferb. He nodded. She raised her hands.

"Drop the gun."

Isabella looked at Ferb again. Ferb shook his head. She gripped the gun tighter.

Cody's expression didn't waver. He just raised one eyebrow quizzically. "'Kay," he shrugged.

Then he shot Isabella in a sprinkler-like fashion, right in the face. Isabella shrieked and shook her head, dog-style, letting the water slosh out of her long, black hair.

"That's _cold_!" Isabella shuddered.

"You're out for 10 minutes, Izzie," Phineas told her, leaning as far back onto the tree trunk as he could so he could speak around Autumn's water gun pointed at his neck.

"Dang it." Isabella stormed toward her yard.

Ferb, meanwhile, cut his eyes between Cody and Autumn. "An alliance?" he guessed.

"No, we're just being nice and not shooting each other," Cody sneered. "What does it look like?"

"One couldn't tell which one it is when you're up against your girlfriend, C-Man," teased Phineas, still pinned against the stupid tree.

Cody lowered his eyelids. "You're asking for a drink, carrot-top."

"Carrot-top?" Phineas repeated. "That the best you could come up with?"

"After I shoot you you can go in your backyard and sit there thinking up better insults for yourself, I don't care," smirked Cody.

Autumn rolled her eyes. "Just get him, tough guy."

Cody shot at Ferb. Ferb did a full backflip in the air, dodging the water, landing balanced on top of the wooden fence, then ran along it without falling, ducking behind the leafy boughs of the tree Phineas was cornered against.

"You have got to be kidding me," Autumn muttered.

"He's a show off," Phineas shrugged.

"Don't need your commentary," Cody informed him.

"Are we a little bitter?" Phineas grinned.

Cody pulled out a cucumber-shaped, transparent, plastic canteen from his jacket pocket and flipped it open, pouring more water into his gun's cockpit. "We aren't, but thanks for checking."

"Hey!" Autumn suddenly snapped.

Phineas was no longer backed up against the tree trunk.

"Carrot-top _and _the next Houdini. How does he do it?" Cody observed, eyelids lowered.

"He was right there! _Right there_!" Autumn groaned.

Cody raised _both _eyebrows. "Somebody's competitive."

"Come on!"

Meanwhile, in the tree branches, Phineas and Ferb watched Cody and Autumn race away.

"Show off?" Ferb folded his arms and leaned back against a branch.

"Well, you _are_!"

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**(The action will start in the next few chapters. Detailed reviews, please!)**


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, Phineas, whatcha doin'?"

Phineas looked up and nodded to Isabella. "Hey, Izzie. I'm working on a project for that science fair in the fall."

"But it's summer vacation," Isabella pointed out. She entered the yard and stood over him.

Phineas was kneeling in the grass and drawing ceaselessly on a large blueprint. He appeared to be nearly finished with the sketch. "Yeah, but once I get this done, we can use the rest of summer vacation to do other fun stuff. Wanna help?"

"Sure," Isabella said, smiling and sitting beside him. She glanced around. "Hey, where's Ferb?"

He shrugged. "Out with Vanessa."

"Again?"

Phineas shrugged again.

"He sure spends a lot of time with her," Isabella said carefully. Something was bothering Phineas, and she had a good guess as to what it was.

"Yeah." Phineas continued to work.

"I mean, a _lot _of time with her." Isabella raised an eyebrow.

"Yep." Phineas grabbed a wrench and began screwing two parts together, seemingly oblivious.

"Let's see, he was with her yesterday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday..." Isabella cut her pupils skyward and began counting off her fingers.

Phineas twisted a little too hard at the two metal pieces snapped apart. He stood up and wiped grease-stained hands on a rag in his back pocket. "I'm gonna go get some more parts," he said calmly, and then retreated inside.

"Hey, Isabella." Autumn entered the backyard with Cody. "What's up?"

"Phineas was working on this science-project thing and I was helping him." Isabella folded her arms. "Ferb's with Vanessa. I think Phineas is jealous."

"Of Vanessa?" Autumn raised both eyebrows.

"Yeah," Isabella nodded. "I guess. He wants to spend summer with his brother."

"Where is he now?" Cody asked suddenly.

Isabella glanced at him. "Inside."

Cody then silently stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled into the house.

Autumn shifted her weight to the other foot. "What's he making?"

Isabella picked up the blueprint. "Let's find out."

They both examined it and Autumn put a hand to her own forehead. "Complicated much?"

"It's not easy, having an imagination that big," Isabella told her proudly. She squinted at the blueprint as if it would help her figure it out. Obviously that worked, because she proceeded to say, "Looks like some...time-portal or whatever."

"So where's the opening?" Autumn pointed to the picture. "It's just a tube thing."

"So far," Isabella defended her boyfriend.

"You said he finished."

"Maybe I was wrong." Isabella shot back teasingly. "Maybe it's not supposed to be a portal?"

"Whatever." Autumn let go of the paper and stepped backward. "Too scientific for me."

"Too bad," Isabella smirked. "I hereby volunteer you to help us make it the rest of the day. Then maybe we can do something to take Phineas' mind off Ferb."

"You mean the way Ferb's ditching him?" Autumn muttered.

Isabella arched a brow. "Yes. Yes I do."

* * *

Someone knocked on the bedroom door. Phineas looked up hopefully from where he sat on his bed. Maybe Ferb was back. "It's open."

"Not if I had to knock." Cody stepped in and closed the door with a heel.

Phineas smiled, but it looks strained. "Hey, C-Man."

"Sup?"

"I came up here to get some parts for the science fair entry. Me and Ferb were supposed to do it together, but..." Phineas shrugged one shoulder. "Meh, I guess he's busy."

"No offense, dude, but I don't see any parts. Like, anywhere." Cody raised an eyebrow.

"Isabella was...well, let's just say she knows me better than I want her to sometimes," Phineas said with a sigh. "I actually came inside to keep my cool."

"Last I checked, your cool doesn't leave your body." Cody stood over him, arms folded. "Need me to knock some sense into a certain Flynn-Fletcher?"

Phineas blinked. "It's not like he's doing anything intentionally wrong..." He rubbed his ear.

"Not the Flynn-Fletcher I was talking about, man."

Phineas looked up. "Me?"

"No, your sister. Who do you think?" Cody sat beside him. "Don't tell me you think Ferb's ditching you on purpose."

"Well, he doesn't exactly _force _himself to hang with Vanessa," Phineas mumbled.

"I know you're romantically challenged," Cody snorted, "but dude, she's his _girlfriend_. She takes up, like, a whole half of his brain-space most of the day. He's constantly thinkin' about her. Come on. Don't say _you _don't waste time thinking about Izzie."

Phineas' cheeks turned red. "I don't. I-I mean, I _do_. I just...not...I mean, I usually preoccupy myself with...um." He stopped and squinted craftily. "So you know this because of Autumn?"

Cody's face drained of color, the opposite effect such conversation had on the redhead. "Don't even try. This is about _you_."

"Oh right." Phineas rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just...Ferb's always there. I can't think back far enough to where I didn't have him beside me."

"Yet you can think back to when _we_ were kids..." Cody began, rolling his eyes.

"Not the point. Even after I met you, I already knew Ferb. He just wasn't my brother yet. Anyway," Phineas sighed, "I'm not used to being without him. He's like...well, we're too close for comfort, I guess most people would say. I don't know what to do when he's not here. It's not fun anymore. I need Ferb beside me to even get anything _done_. Summer vacation isn't enjoyable without Ferb. I-If I had to choose...no offense...between Ferb or anyone else in the _world_to spend the day with, just doing whatever we want, I'd choose Ferb every time. And when he'd rather be spending time with some girl..." He looked away. "Makes me feel like..."

"Like he could have just as much fun either way," Cody finished for him.

"Yeah." Phineas nodded. "But I know he's got other stuff to do than spend all day goofing off with his little stepbrother, right?"

Cody raised his eyebrows. "Ask _him_, doofus. I wouldn't know about that. But I _do _know there's, like, a whole group of people in the backyard who'd like nothing _better_ than to spend all day goofing off with Ferb's little stepbrother." He elbowed Phineas. "C'mon."

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**(Author's Note: Still so short, but I have SO MUCH on my plate! Aaaaaaagh! But you guys are always so loyal and nice, so I can't wait to write you more chapters. Least I can do, you sticking with me and my shameless OC-shipping for so long. I'm figuring more things out about how this story will go, so now I'm dead-set on finishing it and if anybody tries stopping me, I'm gonna go all Web-Head on 'em! {I've been reading _Ultimate Spider-Man_ comics recently...heh...} So I hope you don't get too antsy waiting for the action to come in. Next chapter coming soon! ~Doverstar)**


	3. Chapter 3

"So it's a time portal?" Isabella put her hands behind her back.

Phineas, Cody, Autumn, Galan, Valia, Isabella, Buford, and Baljeet all stood in the center of the backyard, staring at the contraption in front of them. It had taken all day to build without Ferb's help.

"Well, sort of," Phineas said, scratching the back of his head. "It can travel through time, but it's kind of an educational machine, I guess. See, you go up the tube into that dome up there."

He pointed to the UFO-shaped dome high above the Flynn-Fletcher household. Baljeet's neck craned, and Buford took the chance to kick the Indian teen's feet out from under him so that Baljeet landed in the grass on his back.

Phineas went on, "Then the dome starts spinning until the door opens and it takes you to a certain point of time in history. Whatever you do there could effect your future, depending on what it is you actually _do_. Then...if I programmed it correctly, it should show you what your future would be like if you changed that certain thing. And it gives you a choice, too, to actually do it or not."

"But you already did it," Isabella said, confused. "That's why it takes you to your future to show you how things turn out afterward, right?"

Phineas blinked at her, then flipped through his notebook, pencil tucked behind his ear, brow furrowed. "I...yeah, that's...wait." He peered at the page he had turned to. "It's supposed to take you to the past _twice_, to a critical point in your life that already happened, so that the first time you're kind of on the outside looking in, you know? So you can see what you _could _have done. Then it takes you to your future to see what it would be like later in life if you'd done that...and then it takes you back into your past for _real_, to that same point, to let you make the decision for yourself."

Baljeet stood up, brushing his blue T-shirt off, and glared at Buford before addressing Phineas. "You created a machine that can alter multiple futures at once?"

"That's kind of dangerous, isn't it?" Isabella asked nervously.

"Yeah, I mean, what if it turned out one of us didn't exist in the future afterward because of somebody else's 'decision?'" Galan added, raising an eyebrow.

Cody elbowed him. "I know what _I'm _gonna do today."

"Shut up," Galan smirked.

Autumn snickered. Then she blinked. "Wait, we'll _all _go to the _same _person's past? Together?"

Phineas scratched his head. "Well, if you guys wanna be the first group to try it out..."

"Yeah!"

"Sweet!"

"I'm game."

"Let's do it!"

"Absolutely."

"I'm not comfortable with that," Autumn said, folding her arms around herself and kicking at the ground awkwardly.

Cody cocked his head at her. "We're not gonna, like, leave you in the past."

"That's not it," Autumn hissed. "I just don't wanna go into _my _past. It's...it's not pretty."

"No one's is," Phineas said, confused.

Everyone stared at him with extremely-unimpressed looks, eyelids lowered all around. Even Isabella.

Phineas's pupils grew innocently. "What?"

"Yours was sunshine and daffodils, if I remember correctly," Cody said, raising a single eyebrow.

Phineas' eyes now darted away, and he looked uncomfortable. "Not exactly," he mumbled. "I can remember a lot of bad stuff."

"Anyway," Isabella cut in, rescuing him, "I'm pretty sure it'll be safe, Autumn."

"Besides," Phineas said, "the machine is sort of unpredictable. We don't know _where _we'll end up."

"Or rather, _when_," came the familiar British accent near the gate.

Ferb was leaning on the fence, listening.

Phineas brightened. "Hey, Ferb, when did you get here?"

Ferb walked up as Phineas threw an arm around him. "Well," he said softly, "I've been listening for the past twelve minutes."

"Oh." Phineas glanced around at the group. "We finished the project without you." He looked unhappy and apologetic. In fact, the next words out of his mouth were, "Sorry. You were out with Vanessa. I know you wanted to work on it. You've been looking forward to it for weeks..."

"It's all right," Ferb interrupted, shrugging. He really did look careless about it. "Vanessa told me to tell you hello, by the way."

Phineas didn't do anything for a moment aside from when he removed his arm from his brother's shoulders and stared at him for about a whole 60 seconds.

Ferb really didn't mind?

Isabella cleared her throat. "So, when do we go in?"

Phineas glanced around at them. "We can go now. It's a fun ride up!"

Valia gave a little bounce. "Oooh, I'm going first!" She bowed to Phineas and Ferb. "Consider me your guinea pig."

"You make a very hyper guinea pig," teased Galan.

Valia grabbed his arm. "You're coming too, you spatula!"

Cody and Autumn exchanged a glance. Phineas shrugged at Ferb. Baljeet and Buford blinked at the same time. Isabella raised both eyebrows as high as her hairline.

"Spatula?" Autumn coughed to Galan.

Galan was too busy getting sucked up the tube with Valia, who let out a delighted whoop as she went up the twisting contraption.

"Okay, any of you toasters wanna go next?" Cody folded his arms and broke the silence, exhaling.

Phineas cackled. Isabella smothered a giggle with a hand.

"I ain't nobody's toaster!" Buford bellowed. "I'm a blender. It's slimming."

"_Slimming_ isn't in your vocabulary," Baljeet huffed.

"What vocabulary?" Cody grunted.

"I'll go." Phineas volunteered. "Coming, Ferb?"

Ferb shrugged again and followed his brother rather slowly up the tube. Phineas laughed jauntily as he and his stepbrother were shot upward.

"Buford next!" Buford crowed, and pulled Baljeet in with him.

"Wait up!" Isabella giggled, following their lead.

Cody rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh...you don't have to go, y'know," he told Autumn. They were the only ones still in the backyard.

"I want to," Autumn assured him. She wouldn't look at him.

"We could just walk away," Cody coughed, looking the other way.

Autumn rubbed the toe of her shoe along the grass. "We could."

"And go to the Park instead."

"And see Bartholomew."

"Yeah."

"Yeah..."

They glanced at the UFO-shaped dome in the clouds.

Cody glanced at her. "After you."

"Age before beauty."

"I insist."

"Move it, tough guy. Some time in this dynasty."

"Hey," he said suddenly, eyes locking with hers. "If we _do _go up there, I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to you, okay?"

Autumn stared at him, then dipped her head. "And I'll have _your _back too. We all know there's a squealing little girl in there somewhere." But her voice was trembling with anxiety.

Cody smirked at her and stuck his hands in his jacket pocket, strolling underneath the tube. He was sucked up exactly in that position, as if a statue.

Autumn took a deep breath and went in after him.

She was instantly zooming upward, the world below a blur around her vision. The tube changed colors until it was like she was shooting through a kaleidoscope. Music began blaring through the tube.

**(Author's Note: The song Autumn is listening to, in case you're wondering, is actually _Alligator Sky _by Owl City, the no-rapping version. You can turn it on if you want, but it's not a requirement.)**

Autumn's ears weren't filled with the _whooshing _sound as the vacuum slurped her through the sky. The music, senseless as it was, completely dominated all other noise. Autumn began to slow and glanced out the tube's now-clear plastic shell, similar to a window. A bird was giving her the skunk eye, as if to say, "All I want is to fly over this house just _once _and not have to wonder what goes through your twisted human minds."

And suddenly, with a rush of air, she was standing on solid ground.

The UFO-dome was basically empty. It was all black with blinking, glowing, neon-green lights and patterns stretching across the floor and walls. Phineas and Ferb were at a...it looked like a vending machine.

"I'll take a Coke," Cody came up behind them.

Phineas grinned. "This is no ordinary vending machine, Cody. It's the control panel for the Time Dome."

"Time Dome?" Ferb glanced sideways at him.

"Yeah. I came up with that just now." Phineas told him proudly.

Ferb arched a brow.

"What?" Phineas asked, confused. "You think I should change it?"

"Time Dome sounds good to me," Isabella said.

Buford and Baljeet added their consent in a mix of approving words they mumbled out awkwardly.

"S-So, uh," Phineas shook his head rapidly as if to clear it. Then he smiled again as he began explaining the vending machine. "You can choose what time you want to be taken to, the day, the year, the month, the hour, blah blah blah, and then you press the big red button and it takes you there. Any questions?"

"What's that humming sound?" Isabella asked, raising a hand as if in school.

"What humming sound?" Phineas glanced around, raising an eyebrow quizzically.

"Sounds like my blender when it's about to blow," Buford rumbled.

"What is it with you and blenders?" Galan inquired.

"It's getting louder. Hear that? I hear it. It's getting louder. Yep." Valia looked around, trying to get a visual on the sound.

"How much sugar did you inhale today?" Cody waved a hand in front of Valia's eyes.

Valia glanced at him. "Huh what?"

"She's right. It's starting to hurt my ears," Isabella complained.

Sure enough, the humming was getting louder and louder, until they had to shout to be able to hear each other.

"Look!" Baljeet cried, pointing.

Autumn's eyes widened. "What's that?"

A wave of green light was rushing toward them.

Ferb stepped in front of the group as the light moved across their bodies and back down again. "I believe it's scanning us," he said, but he had to raise his voice.

Autumn flinched. "Make it stop!"

"It's not supposed to do this," Phineas muttered.

"What?" They all shouted, confused.

"I said it's not supposed to do this!" Phineas called. "I don't remember designing this part."

"You always _did _give your mechanics minds of their own," Baljeet conceded.

"I don't know if anybody's ever asked you this," Cody raised his arms in caution as the light scanned him, looking down at himself. His pupils cut to Phineas, head not turning, as he snapped, "but _why _do you want a machine to have a brain?"

"Why not?" Phineas said innocently.

"Brains _think_, geek." Cody grumbled.

"All except Buford's," Galan added.

"Shut up, Walker!" Buford hollered down the line.

"You're mean when you're scared," Phineas teased to Cody.

"I'm not scared and I'm gonna sacrifice you to your brainy flying saucer if you don't tell it to knock it off," Cody growled.

"_Everybody _shut up!" Autumn ordered, panicking in the calmest way possible: standing stock-still with her fists bunched at her sides and her eyes darting frantically.

"I feel tingly," Valia said, bringing her hand up to her face. Her eyes widened. "Oh my gosh. Galan, you guys, check this out!"

Galan glanced at her and his heart leapt into his throat. "Her...your hand's disappearing!"

"This tickles."

Everyone stared at Valia as her hand began to disintegrate into tiny green squares. The squares, beetle-sized at first, shrank until they had disappeared, each in a quarter of a millisecond. Her arms went next, then her torso, legs, and finally her head.

"Galan? What's happening?" Her voice hung in the air heartbeats after she was gone, sounding robotic and echoing before fading, as if someone had turned down the volume on a TV.

Galan's head whipped toward Ferb, the nearest Flynn-Fletcher to where he was standing. "Where'd she go?" he demanded.

Ferb shrugged, looking slightly curious but otherwise as blank as ever.

Galan glanced then at the redheaded inventor. "Phineas?"

"I dunno!" Phineas shouted from the other side of the line of teenagers. "I didn't create this part!" He sounded interested and cheerful as ever, but confused as well.

"My feet hurt," Buford suddenly complained.

Instantly all eyes turned to where the bully, too, was disappearing. His feet went first, then his legs, chest, arms, and neck. He let out a not-so-manly yelp as his head blipped into tiny squares. Then he was no longer there.

"Baljeet's gone too!" Phineas announced.

"So's Galan!" Autumn gasped.

"Phineas, I'm getting a weird feeling," Isabella moaned, interrupting.

Her reaction to the dissolving was a bit worse than the others'. Instead of feeling tingly or having her feet hurt, Isabella's eyes rolled back in her head as her form began to waver and pop into little squares, similar to tiny bubbles rising to the surface of a glass of soda. She staggered before the disintegration reached her hips.

Phineas tried to catch her, finally distressed. "_Isabella_!" he cried.

He reached for her hand, but Isabella was already absent.

Cody had a hand messing his own already-messy brown hair, pupils shrinking as he realized his girlfriend wasn't there anymore either. "Autumn?"

"They're okay," Phineas told him, voice shaking. "They'll be fine."

Cody gave him a poisonous look. "You don't get it. I told her she'd be okay!"

"Cody." Ferb pointed to Cody's hand.

Cody held it up to his eyeline. "Joy. And now my head's killing me."

His hand was fizzing away slowly.

"Don't worry," Phineas said quickly, trying to cram in as many words as he could while Cody could still hear him. "We can figure this out. It's probably doing what it was programmed to do."

"I'm gonna force-feed you liver for this, dude, I promise," Cody snarled.

"Don't worry," Phineas repeated, but this time he looked doubtful.

Cody was gone in a matter of seconds.

"Well, Ferb, it looks like it's just..." Phineas glanced around. "Ferb?" His stepbrother was nowhere to be seen. He'd disintegrated too!

Phineas felt a sudden rush of adrenaline...many feelings, actually, adrenaline just one of them. His heartbeat sped up and suddenly he couldn't breathe.

He watched his arms and everything below them fizz into little red squares, which then shrunk and disappeared, leaving him bodiless. He began feeling lightheaded, and his vision faded.

"I'm not gonna throw up," he told himself. "This is kind of fu..."

And everything went black.


	4. Chapter 4

Isabella sat up and looked around. Her heart was beating like crazy, and stars danced before her eyes. She blinked. Blinding sunlight. No, wait, total darkness. Which was it?

Suddenly music was blaring through her ears, pounding her spine. An oddly-pitched voice, the owner apparently not a few feet away from her, rang out.

"_I'm starting with the man in the mirror!  
I'm asking him to change his..._hey, what...?"

Isabella's eyes adjusted to...stage lights? Okay, she was on a stage. And..._woah_. _Millions_ of people, _trillions _of them, all staring at her.

She turned to look at the performer to her right. Then she felt her eyes roll back in her head again. The enormous crowd gasped. Then...blackness.

* * *

Galan landed unhurt in a field. He looked around and squinted. _Where...?_

"Greetings!"

Galan flinched and scrambled to his feet, turning around. "Who..."

"I am Lady Jane." A girl with a medieval lavender dress and her short, curled-at-the-ends blonde hair pulled into a small braid curtsied to him. "What brings you to the harvesting fields?"

"Uh..." Galan stared at her, perplexed. He replied in a cracked voice, clearing his throat to rid himself of it, "Um, you look just like a...a friend of mine."

She seemed confused, but still cheery. "What strange garments you wear. Such bright colors! Where did you get these fine clothes?" She pinched the sleeve of his T-shirt.

Galan stumbled backward. _What time period is this, from the Robin Hood era? _"Er, look, I have to go. I'm looking for my friend."

"But you must stay and share with us," Lady Jane insisted. "My companions would be very interested in which kingdom you come from."

"I'd love to hang and chat with you guys," Galan answered, palms up, backing away a few steps, "I mean, one of you could be my great-times-100 grandmama, but I've got bigger fish to fry, you know?" He let out a nervous chuckle as she advanced, eyes widening with every syllable that came from his mouth.

"An odd tongue. Which kingdom did you say you were from, young one?" said an elderly woman, dressed in the same manner as Lady Jane.

"I didn't. Uh...I gotta..."

Suddenly his hand began to shake. Galan glanced down and saw that his right arm was disappearing as he moved.

The medieval women stared at him, bewitched.

"Well," Galan said twisting his now-gone hand in front of his face experimentally, as if he could still feel it. "Imagine that. Right on time."

Then his vision darkened.

* * *

"Oh, great."

Baljeet whipped his head to the left and let out an overjoyed whoop. "Buford?"

"Baljeet?" Buford gawked at him. "I ain't the only one?"

They were in the middle of the ocean.

"What's that?" Baljeet asked as Buford swam toward him. He pointed.

"I dunno, but it's land!" Buford crowed.

"It looks like San Fransisco...1937." Baljeet rubbed his chin underwater. "If we swim for about a mile, perhaps we can reach the bridge..."

"Dude, my legs hurt."

"Then how are you going to swim to the bridge?" Baljeet scoffed, annoyed.

"No, I mean..."

Buford's form had dissolved before he could finish the sentence. Baljeet found that he could no longer tread water. Suddenly he was sinking. He lost all feeling in his limbs. Panic seared through the Indian teenager. _I am going to drown__! _he thought in horror.

Then just as his head ducked below the surface, a flash of green light illuminated the area behind his eyelids and the world went dark.

* * *

Valia flashed into existence in the middle of a cobblestone street. "Okay," she said cheerily. "Where am I?"

"Oy, missy! Outta the way!"

Valia turned and spied a horse-drawn carriage headed directly toward her. A thick London accent reached her ears as the driver spoke and she leapt to the side.

"Hey!" Valia cried, faking a New York accent of her own. "I'm walkin' here!"

The driver didn't answer as the carriage clip-clopped away.

"When in doubt, ask for directions," Valia said, hands shaking. She looked around. _People everywhere. Not totally alone. _She hurried up to a homely-looking woman in a smart dress. "'Scuse me," she asked, "but could you tell me what year it is, pretty please?"

"1902," the woman said, eyebrows furrowing. "Wot d'you think?"

"Thanks," Valia said. She jittered in place as if unable to hold still. _Keep her here. Keep her talking. _"Pretty dress. What's your name?"

"Moira," the woman croaked. "Angela Moira."

"I'm Valia!" Valia chattered, sticking out her hand.

Angela looked at her hand, squinted, then curtsied, still with a befuddled look upon her face.

"Oh yeah, duh." Valia curtsied back. "Wait, I can do better." She did it again, a lot more gallantly. "This is fun." Again she curtsied, crossing her legs.

"Pardon me."

A man in a snappy-looking suit and a thick brown mustache joined them. "I wonder, could you perhaps direct me to Kensington Gardens, Miss...er...?"

"I'm Valia. She's Moira Angela." Valia pointed to Angela first, then herself as she said the names, realized her thumb pointed to the wrong person with each name, then shook herself and switched her thumb back, smile still on her face.

"Angela Moira!" snapped the woman.

"Sorry." Valia shrugged. She turned back to the man. "I don't know where Kensington Gardens is, but she prob'ly does." She nodded to Angela.

Angela glared at her, shook her head as if helpless, then glanced at the man. "Down the street, turn right, there'll be the gates."

"Indeed. Thank you kindly." The man touched his hat to them, then hurried along. He stopped suddenly, as if something had just occured to him, then turned over his shoulder and said, "Did you say Moira Angela?"

Valia nodded.

"Moira's my last name," slurred the woman. "Angela is my first."

The man nodded several times, lost in thought. He turned and winked at Valia. "Moira Angela sounds quite lovely, though, doesn't it?"

Valia grinned. "Uh-huh! And I'm Valia. Like I said. What's your name?"

The man smiled and gave a little bow. "Sir Matthew James Barrie." He straightened up. "But many tend to refer to me as J.M. for short."

With that, he hobbled away.

"J.M. Barrie," said Valia, tapping her chin. "That sounds familiar." Her hand became tingly. "Oh."

"Upon my soul!" cried the Angela woman, hand to her chest. "Your...your hand, love!"

Valia raised her hand and found that it wasn't there. "Not again," she groaned.

Soon she had disappeared, leaving the streets of London, 1902, filled with people wondering what a strange, purple-clad youth had been doing there, in those garments, and where she had gone.

* * *

Autumn shivered. Where was she now? She looked down at herself. She was whole again. Good.

Now what?

She surveyed the scene. She was standing in snow. All around her was a crystal-white forest. It was freezing.

"Uh...hello?"

No answer. What year was it? What era? Where could she be, with no civilization?

She felt an intense pain in her stomach. Suddenly her vision became blurry. _I'm disintegrating again! _

* * *

"Ow." Cody rubbed his head, crouching on the ash-filled ground.

_BOOM!_

"Up, up, on your feet, lad!" cried a loud, commanding voice.

Cody was knocked flat on his stomach with a boot to his back. "Hey!"

"Stand down, men, can't you see he's dazed?" came that same voice.

The boot was lifted from Cody's back and the brown-haired boy stood up, shaking himself.

"What the heck..."

Screams and shouts of agony and triumph rang around the blackened valley. Smoke rose into the sky, blotting out the sunlight. What little trees were left in the area were charred and burning. Bombs were exploding everywhere.

"Which are you, friend or foe?" demanded a man with a thick black mustache and army clothing.

"Uh...friend." Cody scratched at the back of his head. "I think."

"Mentally damaged?" the man asked. "How many fingers do you see, boy?"

He held up all five on his left hand, which was gloved.

"Four."

The man slapped the hand to his own forehead. "Great Scott, he's delusional!"

"No, dude, you've got four fingers and a thumb." Cody folded his arms and sneered.

"Ah."

"Where am I?" Cody asked, flinching as another explosion went off a mile behind them.

"Don't you know a war when you see one?" cried the man. "This is World War I, boy!" He spread his arms.

"_What_?" Cody gagged. He tapped two fingers to his temple, then shook his head hard, glowering up at him. "What year is this?"

"Year? 1916!"

"Wait, I can't...I'm not..."

It was too late. His arms were dissolving into tiny black squares. A full minute later, Cody Bannister was no longer existing in the war of 1916.


	5. Chapter 5

Isabella blinked several times, eyes adjusting to the light. "Where am I now?"

"Don't ask me," muttered a familiar voice.

"Autumn?" Isabella glanced over and saw Autumn standing to her right.

Everything was black. It was as if they stood in Limbo. Black floor, black ceiling, black walls, no door...but not pitch-black dark. She could see Autumn clearly as if a spotlight were shining down on her.

"Where have _you _been?" Autumn asked, eyes wide.

"Where have we _all _been?" Valia suddenly shimmered into view.

Buford came next, and then Baljeet. Both of them were soaked.

"What happened to you two?" Galan appeared.

"San Fransisco," Baljeet muttered, wringing out the hem of his shirt. "_That _is what happened."

"Galan, you have grass in your hair," Valia pointed out sweetly.

Galan caught sight of her and grinned. "I was in King Arthur land, I think. You okay?"

Her head bobbed. "Uh-huh. I met this J.M. Barrie guy..."

"You met the author of _Peter Pan_?" Phineas and Ferb's form fizzed before them.

Valia snapped her fingers. "I _knew _that was it! Right on the tip of my brain."

They all raised their eyebrows at her.

"Wait, where's Cody?" Autumn exclaimed.

"There." Ferb nodded to her right.

Cody had appeared. He was a sight for sore eyes, indeed. His face had black smoke marks, the left knee of his jeans had an even bigger hole ripped in them, and his eyes were bloodshot.

"Woah," Buford whistled.

Autumn's jaw dropped. "Are you okay?"

"What happened?" Isabella shrieked.

"World War I." Cody coughed. "Like 96 years ago."

"_You _were in World War _I_?" Phineas gawked at him. "Sweet!"

Cody gave him a classic Cody Glare. "Somebody get me some liver and rope." He moved toward Phineas menacingly.

Phineas leaned backward while Ferb and Galan grabbed Cody's arms to restrain him comically.

"Okay, so the system has bugs," Phineas said, palms up. "But we can fix it. Right, Ferb?"

Ferb nodded. "Perhaps," he said, shrugging.

"That sounds promising," Baljeet muttered, rolling his eyes.

Cody jerked away from Ferb and Galan and glanced at Autumn. "Your shoes are wet."

"I think I was part of the ice age or something," Autumn scoffed.

"It's simple," Phineas announced. "The system scanned our molecules and broke them apart, molding them back together in random time periods as a test-run. It automatically scattered us so that it could try out multiple eras at the same time."

"Listen to that sentence for a second, Phineas," Isabella said patronizingly. "Multiple _eras_ at the same _time_?"

"Cool, huh?" Phineas grinned at her.

"So where are we _now_?" Baljeet asked.

"And where did you two go?" Isabella added, pointing to Phineas and Ferb.

"Ancient China," Ferb said, burping. "They hadn't yet perfected low mein."

"Ireland 1805," Phineas said, shrugging. "Besides the point." He glanced at Baljeet, answering his inquiry, "And I guess the Time Dome brought us to...well, think of it as a place where time doesn't pass. So we're out of all time right now."

"I always wanted to be nonexistent," Galan mused.

Valia elbowed him teasingly.

"This will give the machine a chance to send us to different places, now that it's memorized our molecules," Phineas went on. "It's also tapped into our brain waves. I've designed it so that we'll have exactly 30 seconds to think of our destination. If you think hard enough, you'll go there. So if everyone wants to buddy up..."

"I'll go with you, Phineas!" Isabella cried.

"Me and Ferb," Phineas corrected with a grin. "Right, bro?" he glanced at Ferb.

Ferb nodded.

They were immediately scanned again by a green light.

"What just happened?" Isabella glanced down at herself.

"It's acknowledged we three are going together and it's preparing to send us where we wanna go," Phineas explained enthusiastically. "It'll do that for everyone once we decide who we're buddying with."

"I'm with Galan!" Valia cheered, shaking Galan's arm.

They were both scanned.

Galan jittered with his arm while she did so. "Where we headed?" he asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Um." Valia began tapping her chin, thinking.

"The timer started," Phineas said.

"How do you know?" Isabella asked.

Phineas pointed.

Green numbers, like a time-bomb clock, hung in the air as if made of mist particles. It was counting down from 30. Now it was on 20.

"I'm goin' with the Nerd," Buford said, jerking his head toward Baljeet.

Both of them were bathed in green light for about three heartbeats after the announcement.

"Why?" Baljeet groaned.

"'Cuz you can tell me where we are," Buford grunted.

"Why can you not just think up where we go?" Baljeet scoffed.

"I don't do thinkin'. It implies that I'm not the tough-guy I try so hard to depict because of my secret insecurity." Buford shrugged.

Valia raised a fist. "Amen!"

She received many amused, confused looks as she grinned at everyone, nodding at them as if encouraging them to join her cheering.

"So me, Ferb, Isabella are going together. Buford and Baljeet. Valia and Galan. Cody? You going with Autumn?" Phineas glanced at his friend.

Cody arched a brow. "Uh-huh. But no wars. Deal?"

He and Autumn were scanned.

Autumn wasn't listening. She had her back turned to them, looking up at the floating green timer. She was hugging herself with huge eyes.

"16 seconds, everybody!" Phineas announced.

"Autumn?" Cody approached his girlfriend and stood beside her. "You look sick."

"I-I don't...I don't wanna do this," Autumn stammered.

"We don't have to," Cody told her quickly. "Phineas, how do you get us out of here?"

"We can't," Phineas said, eyebrows dipping. "We only have 9 seconds left. It's too late now. Everybody should be thinking of their destination. You'll be scanned again, but this time it'll scan your mind for the time you'll wanna be sent to."

Everyone fell silent and there were contemplative looks.

"Where are we goin'?" Cody asked Autumn, scratching the back of his head.

Autumn's pupils shrank as she and Cody were scanned. "Oh no."

"What?" Cody stiffened at the horror in her voice.

She and Cody were scanned.

"No, no, no!" Autumn held fists to the sides of her head. "Stop!"

"Stop what? What's wrong?" Cody was on the edge of panicking _for _her now.

"The machine! I-I didn't mean to think of..." Her voice spiraled into a wail. "Phineas, please..." Autumn turned begging eyes to where Phineas stood with Ferb and Isabella.

Everyone else had been scanned and were all now slowly disappearing, one by one, to be taken to their chosen time period.

Phineas fizzed out of existence, Ferb and Isabella fading away after him.

"No!" Autumn cried, squeezing her eyes shut.

Cody grabbed her arm. "Hey! Listen, what's...Autumn?"

Autumn was disappearing. As he grabbed her arm, Cody's hand and the rest of his body began to disintegrate too. He was going where she was going, that much was clear.

Autumn's voice echoed through the Limbo Chamber heartbeats after she and Cody had gone.

"_No_!"


	6. Chapter 6

**(Very Important Author's Note: Please read this! Okay, now this is where we're gonna see Autumn Karmer's past as I have dreamed it up. Yes, most of you guessed right! Confetti, confetti, good for you, yay! Seriously, it must have been easy to guess. But anyway, you guys all know by now that I would _never _write _anything_ dangerous for you to read or gory or scary or just plain R-Rated. Never. I make my fanfics totally safe and fun for any age, and a bit more realistic than PnF fics should be. But Autumn's past is based on many true stories around the world, and I thought it up as a bit of a tribute to children whose lives are like hers was...every _day_. Whose would-be guardians have chosen to destroy them, not protect them. For the children who grew up without knowing that life could actually be happy and fun and that they could have a parent/parents that loved them and treated them like the treasure they should have been to the people who gave birth to them. It isn't fair, but we live in a fallen world. I write this chapter to show you how lucky you are (or to tell some of you how sorry I am that you could even _relate_ to Autumn) that you have people who love you and wouldn't dare even _think _of hurting a single hair on you. Because it's real people who live/lived like my OC, Autumn, did/do that would give anything for that. Now, bear in mind this chapter will not be horrible. I won't write anything detailed, and it won't have sex or anything. I promise. It's not what you think. Or maybe it is. Either way, please keep in mind that the things that happened to Autumn happen every day of every week of every month in every _year_ for decades to children who don't deserve it.**

**This chapter is safe to read. You don't have to worry about being too exposed to anything. ~Doverstar) **

* * *

Cody was still gripping Autumn's arm as they emerged back in time. He was in a dark house. A hallway, to be exact. The walls were moldy and once they might have been painted lavender, but now they were as dull as the rest of the structure. No furniture or pictures hanging anywhere, just the shadows.

Autumn was trembling like crazy. Her eyes were wide open, but she didn't move them or her head, staring straight ahead as if they were closed.

"Dude." Cody looked around again, drinking in the scene. "Where..."

Autumn let out a whimper and he turned his question to a whisper.

"Where are we?" he murmured.

Autumn's hands were shaking. She hugged herself, rubbing her own arms and wincing over and over. It seemed she hadn't heard him.

"Autumn?" Cody put a hand on her shoulder and shook her, concerned. Her face was pale. "Hey, look at me."

Autumn snapped her head around to look at him. There were tears on her cheeks.

Cody stared at her, waving a hand in the 'hello' fashion at a fast pace beside his own head, trying to get her to come back to earth. Her eyes were unfocused. "You gotta..."

_CRASH!_

Cody's head whirled. "What was that?"

Autumn let out a choking sound and squeezed her eyes shut, releasing more tears. She was now shaking uncontrollably, visible even if you were standing 30 feet away.

"Where are you?" said a gravelly voice, loud and nightmarish.

Autumn nearly lost balance. She covered her ears with her hands. "Oh no. Oh no."

Then came the sound of boots slamming down on the floor with each step.

"Please, please..." Autumn was sobbing in a whisper to herself.

"Uh, A? Hello? What's going _on_?" Cody said, pulling one of her hands away from her ears. He wanted to comfort her, help her, but he couldn't if he didn't understand what the problem was.

"Where _are you_?" snarled the voice again, closer now.

Autumn tensed and her head shot up. She dug her fingernails into Cody's palm. "Hide."

"What?"

"Hide! Hide, we have to _hide_!"

She pulled him down the hall at a fast run. Cody kept glancing behind them. What was she running from? Did she know this place somehow?

Autumn seemed to know where she was going. Indefinitely. She ran up a wooden staircase that was broken in several hidden places. She deftly stepped over one that had a jagged, broken hole so big Cody nearly cut his ankle on the bits of wood jutting out. Autumn kept a tight grip on his hand and maneuvered through the winding steps easily. Her eyes were bloodshot and she was gasping for breath. Cody swore he could have heard her heart slamming around in her chest.

The gray-clad teenager dragged her boyfriend through the old house, down a hallway upstairs. She flung open a door without a handle by hooking her fingers through the hole where it should have been, closing it without a sound behind them as she entered a rugged bedroom. The room had a bare mattress and one martyred teddy bear slumped against a wall, one that could spend eternity in the washing machine and still come out looking like miniature roadkill.

"What are you..." began Cody.

Autumn dropped his hand, still trembling, and yanked open a closet door, Cody right behind her.

Both teens stopped in their tracks.

Autumn's breath caught in her throat. She gulped back another sob. Cody could only stare.

In the closet was a little girl, about 6 years old, in the fetal position, hiding behind some coats...or trying to. She was clearly visible. Her face was smudged with dirt and she had several cuts on her arms under her faded, gray T-shirt with Minnie Mouse on the front. She wore ripped blue shorts that stopped just above her knees, which were bruised and also cut, some of the cuts bleeding a bit. Wet lines down her freckled cheeks cleared some of the smudges on her face where tears had fallen. She was sniffling, eyes squeezed shut tight, as if she were afraid to open them. Long, caramel-colored hair that was a tangled mess draped down her back. On her feet were socks three sizes too big for her, without matching.

More footsteps downstairs made the little girl flinch and hold in a whimper of her own, trying to be as silent as possible.

Cody recognized her immediately. He glanced at Autumn and then at the little girl, back and forth, his eyebrows as far from sinking over his large amber eyes as they could get.

"When I find you, girl!" came that same, heavy New York accent. Stomping feet on broken wood let them know the hunter was approaching rapidly.

The girl in the closet's head came up, eyes popping open, tears left trapped below her pupils. She gasped.

"We're not gonna hurt you," Cody began.

The girl wasn't looking at them. Her eyes were pointed straight at the two teenagers, but she appeared to be looking right through them instead.

"She can't see us." Cody muttered. "Great."

Autumn seemed to relax only slightly at that. Probably because that meant the predator following them throughout the household wouldn't be able to see them either. But then she tensed and slowly walked, as if defeated, to the other side of the room. She slouched against the wall and sank down to the floor, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

Cody joined her, resting both arms over his drawn-up knees. "Autumn," he said quietly. "Where are we?"

Autumn sucked in air through her teeth as if in pain. Her eyes were straight ahead, locked on the 6-year-old in the closet.

Cody waited. The footsteps outside the room had gotten slower, as if someone were trying to be silent as they paced the grimy hallway.

"I-I-I can't..." Autumn inhaled with a shudder. "You can't know. I...you weren't supposed to know."

"But now we're here," Cody told her gently. "So there's no getting around it."

Autumn pursed her lips, eyebrows dipping in the middle, eyes distant. She remained quiet.

Cody leaned back on his palms, watching the girl in the closet, who had a similar look on her young face. "Look. If you don't tell me," he said slowly, "I'm gonna see it sooner or later for myself."

Autumn sighed. "Why did your stupid friends have to build that stupid machine?" she cried.

Cody didn't reply. He didn't look at her. He just waited.

"You already know this, probably," Autumn began quietly, "but that kid in there is me." She pointed to the girl huddled in the open closet. "Ten years ago in our time."

Cody sat still.

"A-And...and I'm hiding," Autumn went on, gulping in, "because I'm scared of getting hurt."

"Hurt?" Cody raised an eyebrow and watched her.

Autumn nodded, sniffling. She gave a bitter chuckle that spiraled into another whimper. "Yup. Six years old and I'm hiding from my father, trying to make sure I don't get thrown up against the wall or get a black eye before I go to bed or hear him getting his belt out." She brought up her knees and rubbed them with both hands, watching her younger self gaze down at _her _bruised knees, as if she could still feel the throbbing.

"Your dad did that to you?" Cody whispered, eyebrows sinking.

Autumn opened her mouth to reply.

_BAM!_

The bedroom door slung open and slammed against the wall, which was lacking a doorstopper, and swung back toward the doorframe as a man stormed in.

The man had a barely-shaved black beard, a balding head, and was wearing a white torso with the sleeves ripped off. He also wore green khaki pants and had a belt in his hand.

16-year-old Autumn pressed her back against the wall and cowered as her father's gaze raked around the room, passing over them as if they were dust bunnies. He really didn't see them. As if they weren't there.

Cody gripped the dirty rug of the room with his palms down, eyebrows so low over his eyes that only half his pupils showed, glaring up at the man out of the top of his eyes. Of course, he didn't see it.

6-year-old Autumn had already pulled herself into the corner of the closet. Cody could only see the toes of her too-big socks now.  
Beside him, teenage Autumn was shivering once more.

"I remember," she kept muttering. "I remember this."

Cody felt like he was in some sort of bad dream himself. The man made a great show of stepping carefully around the room, as if he didn't know the only place his terrified daughter could hide in was the closet itself. Prolonging the fear in the six-year-old's every breath, giving her false hope he wouldn't check the coat-hanging cave.

He did.

Autumn closed her eyes as her father reached into the closet and dragged his six-year-old girl out of the closet.

"Stop, stop, stop, _please_, Daddy, _please_!" little Autumn screamed. "I-I didn't do anything!"

Cody propelled himself off of the floor, shooting to his feet, fists balled. His face was a mask of rage, and he shouted, "Drop her! Leave her alone!"

The man couldn't hear him. Neither could the wailing six-year-old Autumn.

"You can't do anything," 16-year-old Autumn choked from where she hunched against the wall.

Cody didn't listen. "Let her go!" he demanded again, in a voice grown men would drop everything and freeze for.

Nothing different happened. Autumn's father began to beat his daughter with the belt, calling her horrible names.  
He called her worthless. He called her a mistake. Weak, pathetic. Good for nothing.

And no matter what he said, Cody could tell nothing would work. He didn't exist in this setting at this period of time, and for whatever reason, Phineas and Ferb's Time Dome wouldn't allow them to make an impact on this particular moment in history.

With every smack of the belt against the little girl's body, 16-year-old Autumn let out a loud sob. Cody could only sit beside her and watch the horror-story of a spectacle before him, let her lean against him and cry. She buried her face on his shoulder while he put a comforting arm around her. Autumn gripped his jacket tightly with one hand and squeezed his own hand with the other. Hard; either from the memory of her terror and pain in this moment, or from the hurt of wishing she'd had a different childhood to look back on.

* * *

**(The song I chose to represent this chapter is _When She Cries_ by Britt Nicole.)**


	7. Chapter 7

When Autumn opened her eyes after her cry, the sounds of her past had faded, and it was utterly quiet. They were in the Limbo place again. She stood up, Cody with her.

Cody watched her, head low, looking out of the top of his eyes. His hands were in his jacket pocket. She moved away from him.

"That sucked," Autumn said flatly.

Cody didn't reply for a minute. "You're not worthless," he finally said.

Autumn grunted, her back to him. She was still hugging herself.

"You're _not._" Cody told her firmly, eyebrows sinking. "Your dad was a jerk. He missed out."

"I don't wanna talk about it," Autumn sniffled.

"Too bad. You gotta get it out." Cody raised his head.

Autumn gave him a poisonous glare over her shoulder. "You don't know what that was like."

"No," Cody said softly. "I don't. But I wanna help."

"Well, you can't." Autumn sneered at him.

Cody remained calm, staring at her. "Yes. I can."

"Why should I ask _anyone _for help?" Autumn snapped, voice echoing through the dark. "They can't change it. _I _can't change it. I don't want to remember! I don't want anyone to _know_!"

Cody narrowed his eyes. "Autumn, if you'll just trust me, I know how..."

"_Trust_ you?" Autumn gave a bitter half-laugh, one that turned Cody's blood to ice. "How could I trust _you_? You told me this wouldn't be bad. You said you wouldn't let anything happen. Well, congratulations, Cody! You broke your promise. I saw _exactly _what I didn't want to see."

Cody stared at her, tongue-tied for the moment. His eyes flashed and he was about to say something in return when Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella morphed into view.

"That was the _best_!" Phineas crowed. He was wearing a Chinese torso over his white-with-orange-stripes T-shirt.

Ferb had on a Japanese straw hat, while Isabella held a paper fan in one hand. There was confetti in her hair.

Autumn didn't turn around. Her shoulders were shaking. Cody looked at his feet and refused to glance up.

Ferb elbowed Phineas. Isabella blinked, confused as she stared at the two.

Phineas noticed Cody's chilled expression and Autumn's sobs. He tugged off his torso and let it disappear from his hand, disintegrating into tiny squares. "Uh oh. Where did you guys go?" His smile fell.

Autumn acted as if she hadn't heard, not turning around.

Phineas looked at the brown-haired teen. "Cody?"

Cody pointedly looked away.

Isabella went to Autumn immediately and began inquiring of her in hushed tones.

Buford and Baljeet reappeared then, with Galan and Valia heartbeats afterward.

"First Macy's Parade?" Galan grinned at Valia. He high-fived her. "Sweet!"

"You guys got to go to a parade?" groaned Buford. "Baljeet over here took us to meet Einstein. La-ame!"

"It was invigorating!" Baljeet practically squealed.

"Um, guys." Valia pointed to where Phineas and Ferb stood trying to get Cody to look up and where Izzie had her arm around a crying Autumn.

"Where'd they go, some ancient cemetery?" Buford scratched at his head.

"Okay, gang," Phineas announced, giving up when Cody refused to speak. "The machine's gonna take us home."

"How do you know?" Isabella asked, curious.

"Ferb and I constructed this remote." Phineas pulled out what looked like a slightly-larger remote-control-car device with three multicolored buttons on it. The buttons seemed fiber-optic, changing colors back and forth. "It can take us back to the Time Dome, here in the Limbo Chamber," he wiggled his eyebrows teasingly, "or set it to the FC Mode."

"FC?" Cody glanced up.

Phineas nodded, smiling. "Stands for Fate Change."

"I vote home!" Valia's hand shot up, grinning. "Anyone? Anyone?"

"Home sounds pretty good right now," Autumn said dully.

The others muttered their consent.

Phineas shrugged. "Okay. Home it is! Time Dome, here we come."

He pressed the middle button.

Suddenly the nonexistent ground beneath them all shook and everyone was unbalanced.

"Phineas?" Isabella said. "What's happening?"

"I must've pressed the wrong button." Phineas answered, voice echoing.

"So now what?" Galan asked.

A giant red mist-timer was now above their heads, counting down from 10 seconds.

"The FC Mode," Phineas observed. He glanced at Ferb. "We should really label these." He pointed to the remote.

Ferb nodded. "Agreed."

"So just press the right button," Buford said.

"I would," Phineas said cheerily, "but the remote's gone."

"_What_?" Isabella raised her eyebrows.

"It disappears after you press a button so it can complete the task it's set on."

"That's stupid." Buford decided.

"I second that," Galan held up a finger.

"My hand's getting tingly," Valia warned.

"Everyone! Quick! Choose a buddy and buddy up!" Phineas announced. "The machine will choose your destination, but you can choose someone to go with you. Remember what I said about the Fate Change Mode this morning? The machine takes you back in time to a crucial moment in your life, then shows you what you would be like today if you'd done a certain something different. Then it takes you back to the moment again to give you the choice to change it or not."

"That would be so interesting and liberating if it were not mortally terrifying as well!" Baljeet wailed.

Suddenly the shaking stopped.

Everyone froze.

Cody glanced up at the timer. It had stopped at 5 seconds left. "What just happened?"

Phineas blinked.

A green line of line began hovering over them. A red number 3 shimmered into view.

"Phineas?" Isabella gestured to the signs.

Phineas was rubbing his chin. "Looks like the Time Dome's gonna choose 3 people to go into FC mode."

"What about the rest of us?" Buford demanded.

"We can go back to the Time Dome and monitor," Phineas surmised, grinning. "Ferb, I know what else we're gonna do today."

Ferb raised an eyebrow.

The light scanned over Valia.

"Ooh. Cool." Valia giggled.

The 3 changed to 2.

The light scanned over Autumn.

Cody shot her a pitied glance.

Autumn looked too exhausted to react.

The 2 changed to 1.

"One more person left," Phineas announced.

"Like that wasn't obvious," Galan muttered.

Then the 1 fizzed.

"Wait, what?" Isabella cocked her head. "What happened to 'one more person?'"

Phineas glanced at Ferb. Ferb glanced at Phineas. Both boys shrugged.

"I'm disintegrating!" Valia told them.

Her lower half was already gone.

"Hurry, think of a buddy to go with you," Phineas said.

"Galan?"

"My pleasure."

They both disappeared.

"Autumn, your turn," Phineas went on.

Autumn sighed. She glanced at Cody.

Cody wondered if she'd chosen him because she wanted him, or because he was the only one who knew about her past out of the entire gang.

Either way, he nodded.

His body began to tingle and his head started to hurt. He looked down and saw himself fading.

Then blackness.


	8. Chapter 8

It smelled like horses.

No, not horses. Something wilder than that. Galan blinked into blinding summer sunlight. A snort behind him and a flash of black and white in the corner of his vision gave him his answer.

"Zebras?"

Valia appeared beside him. "Hey, I know this place."

Galan took a good look around them. It was a zoo. The usual crowded walkways, kids screaming to see their favorite animal, parents complaining it was too hot.

Valia glanced nervously at Galan. "Look."

Galan raised an eyebrow at his old friend and obeyed, glancing in the direction she pointed. "What?"

"Right there."

A family of three walked past. A tall man with blonde hair and tanned skin, a woman walking beside him, holding his hand, with shoulder-length blonde hair. Behind them, skipping along, was a 7-year-old girl wearing a large purple hat, six sizes too big that draped over her eyes a few times before she pushed it back up again. The girl had blonde hair, too, curled at the ends and wore a purple shirt with green sleeves and blue shorts with tennis-shoes untied.

"Can we see the tigers?" the little girl asked.

"No, sweetie."

"I wanna see the tigers! Please? Please? Please, please, please, please?"

"No, honey. Now don't ask again."

The little girl stamped her foot in frustration and kept walking, a stormy look on her face.

"Is that you?" Galan pointed to the girl, looking back and forth between the two.

"That's me."

"Wow."

"I know. I'm adorable." Valia grinned.

Galan grinned back. "So...this is your big life-changing moment we're supposed to see? A day at the zoo?"

Valia processed what he had said and her pupils shrank. "Uh-oh."

"What?"

Valia watched the family walk away. "I remember this. I'm gonna get a grape soda. ...First purple thing I ever drank."

"I can buy it!" 7-year-old Valia said, tugging on her mother's shirt hem as they stood in front of the snack booth.

Her mother laughed. "All right. Give the nice man the money," she handed Valia two dollars, "and Daddy and I will be right over there."

She pointed to a bench. Little Valia's hat fell over her eyes again. Her mother pushed it back up for her, smiling, then walked to the bench with her husband.

Little Valia bought the drink and began sipping it. She walked a few steps, eyes on the swirly straw as the purple liquid zipped through it. The height of entertainment.

"Told ya," 16-year-old Valia nudged Galan. "And then..." Valia's smile fell.

Little Valia was now in the middle of the huge crowd. She glanced around. "Mommy?"

Galan raised an eyebrow and looked at the bench. Her mother and father were both up out of their seats, as if they had just noticed Valia was not where they had left her.

"Valia? Valia Toir, come here right this minute! Valia, sweetie? Valia!"

"They're gonna find you soon, right?" Galan elbowed the older Valia.

"Not soon enough." Valia's gaze darkened. Her quirkiness vanished. Something wasn't right. "I remember they didn't find me until closing time."

"_What_?" Galan spluttered, clutching at his hair with a hand. He was floored. "They left a 7-year-old alone in a zoo this big for 3 hours?"

"Yeah." Valia shuddered.

The scene shifted.

7-year-old was now near the tiger enclosure, but she wasn't focused on the majestic wild cats. She was instead running from place to place. The sidewalk of the zoo was emptying quickly, and she still hadn't discovered her parents.

It began to rain.

Galan couldn't feel the raindrops; they went right through him. "Seriously?"

Valia's eyelids were lowered, unimpressed. "It always rains when things go wrong." She blinked. "It snowed one time when I broke my leg."

"Off topic, Val."

"Right."

"_Mom_!" 7-year-old Valia was screaming. "_Daddy_!"

Galan moved forward. 16-year-old Valia caught his arm.

"Galan, you can't do anything," she reminded him dismally. "Remember? Nobody can see us."

Galan stared at his friend's 7-year-old self in despair. "How long has it been now?"

"2 hours." Valia's breath quickened. "I-It was awful."

Again the scene before them blurred. It was now thunder-storming. They were near the ape exhibit.

"You go in that fake-rock tunnel and there's, like, this thing where there's a window and the apes are on the other side and they come up and make faces at you," Valia explained. "I'm in there."

Galan didn't hesitate to move into the tunnel, Valia right behind him.

There they saw 7-year-old Valia, soaked, hunched in the dark with her back pressed against the wall. She was completely alone, no one to comfort her, jumping at every shadow and trembling.

"She..._you _were so scared," Galan muttered. "Why didn't anyone find you?"

"They did," Valia explained, watching her younger form. "Just not in time."

"You keep saying that," Galan grunted. "What do you mean? Did something worse happen?"

"Not unless you count 3 hours in a storm totally alone as a little kid," Valia answered flatly. "It doesn't seem like too much, yeah, but Galan, I was _terrified_. I'd never, like, y'know, been _alone _alone before. For the first time ever not a single sane person was there to tell me my parents were gonna find me and I was gonna be okay. I was a 7-year-old kid stuck in a zoo in this stupid cave thing so I wouldn't get any wetter than I already was, with giant ape things making freaky noises in the dark and banging the window..."

She took a breath. Galan watched her, eyes exuding fathomless sympathy.

"But yeah, eventually they found me. I think I was asleep, because I only remember being home afterward with my mom and dad hugging me on the couch and apologizing over and over and over."

"I can't believe you had to go through that," Galan murmured. "I'm really sorry, Val."

Valia shrugged. She looked upward as if speaking to the machine. "So, what? _This _is my big moment? What do I have to change?"

No reaction.

"Hel-lo?" Valia cupped her hands around her mouth.

Suddenly the ground shook.

Galan jabbed a thumb her way. "She did it. Not me."

The scene shifted.

It changed to a 9-year-old Valia Toir standing beside her parents on the beach.

"We're at the Resort," Galan said slowly.

"Duh." Valia grinned at him. "They're having one of those Kids Days."

9-year-old Valia was approached my many other young children ready to make friends. But when her mother told her she could play with them while her parents went to get shaved ice, Valia let out a shriek and refused to move a step, gripping her father's hand with a tightness driven by terror.

"After they saw me so scared the other kids always called me a wimp," Valia said softly. "I couldn't make any friends no matter how hard I tried. Sometimes I didn't even want to. I didn't want to be alone ever again. And I always wanted to know exactly where my mom and dad would be at all times. If they weren't where I could see them, I turned totally upside-down and went nuts." She twirled a finger around the side of her head. "Nobody wants to be besties with a sicko."

The scene changed once more.

Galan folded his arms as he stood in the sand beside Valia, observing the docks out over the water. "Nobody but me."

Valia followed his gaze.

The same purple-hatted 9-year-old was strolling down the docks, talking to something that appeared to be visible only to her.

"I'm talking to Harry," Valia explained. "Remember?"

Galan nodded and smiled.

"My dad told me I should make believe I had somebody to be with me when he and my mom couldn't. So I did. Harry." Valia rolled her eyes. "Pretty corny."

9-year-old Valia stopped short. She had spotted the 9-year-old boy with jet-black hair and a blue T-shirt sitting alone at the edge of the docks.

The boy was tossing tiny pieces of dough into the ocean.

"I didn't know you could skip crumbs!" cried 9-year-old Valia, who had come up behind him.

The boy jumped. "Who're you?"

"I'm Valia Toir!" Little Valia chirped. "And you're..."

"Galan Walker." The boy gave her a dazzling smile.

Teenage Galan elbowed teenage Valia. She elbowed him back. They stood together, watching.

Picture blurring, the teens were now standing in what looked like...

"We're in my room," said Valia, confused.

A voice suddenly boomed in their ears. Obviously a recording of Phineas' voice. "This is what your life would be like now if the FC incident had _not _happened! Check it out!"

Valia looked around. The room was the same old room she had back in her own time...exactly the same. On the bed she saw herself, the same age she was now, laying on her stomach with an open book in front of her, a purple cell phone cradled between her shoulder and her ear, chattering away into it.

"I can't go to the drive-in movie tonight," alternate Valia was saying in a bubbly way. "Too many people, you know?"

"Too _many _people?" Normal Valia choked. "I need a whole _mess _of people near me just to get through the day!"

"Unless you're with me?" Galan glanced at her.

"Unless I'm with you, but that's way different." Valia grunted. "I've known you since 3rd grade."

The phone beeped.

"I'm gonna have to call you back, Manny," said alternate Valia. She pressed a button. "Hello? ...Hi! Hey! What is this, like, the fifth time you've called me? Get a life, girl!" She laughed gaily into the phone.

Ordinary Valia cocked her head, watching this different version of herself. Funny, she was _dressed_ the same way.

The door to the bedroom opened and Galan and Valia tensed.

"Honey, Amanda's here," Mrs. Toir said sweetly. "She wants to know if you'd like to sleep over."

"Hang on, Trish," alternate Valia said into the phone. She glanced at her mom. "Tell her I can't, Mom, please? I told Fern I'd have a chick flick all-nighter with _her_ tonight."

"Maybe Amanda could join you," suggested her mother.

"Sounds good to me," alternate Valia shrugged and grinned. She raised an eyebrow at the phone. "No, Trish, I was talking to my Mom. Fern and Amanda are sleeping over. Wanna come? ...Cool."

Galan turned to normal Valia. "Question."

Valia snapped her attention away from her alternate self. "Say huh? What?" She shook her head.

Galan gave her a quizzical look. "Who's Manny?"

"I dunno. No clue. Not in the slightest." Valia shrugged. "Somebody I'd know if I wasn't a monophobiac or whatever."

"A what?"

"My dad says it's the fear of being alone."

"So you'd just have a bunch of friends and be out-of-control popular without that fear?" Galan guessed.

Valia shrugged. "Who knows?" She glanced around the room again. "I should really re-paint my walls. A different shade of purple maybe."

Galan snapped his fingers. "Focus, Val. Without the fear...?"

"Galan, without that _day_ in my life I'd be a totally different person," Valia said, as if just realizing it herself. "I'd have loads of friends...well, obviously." She flung a hand toward her chattering alternate self, who was now both texting to someone and talking to another someone through speakerphone. "I wouldn't have lonely issues and be afraid no one would remember I was there. And I'd actually get something normal people call a 'good night's sleep', too."

Galan rubbed his neck. "I didn't know you had nightmares."

"I don't remember most of 'em anyway." Valia was still looking around, as if she didn't know what her own room looked like. "And it's not just nightmares. I don't like being alone at night, either. Sometimes I sleep with the...with the light on. Like that helps." She looked thoroughly embarrassed. "I keep letting my thoughts get away from me. Next thing I know, I think I'm in that tunnel again." She sighed. "I'm such a spastic."

Suddenly the scene faded to black. Darkness all around them. Then they were standing in the exact same spot as earlier, watching 7-year-old Valia hand the man her two dollars and take the grape soda.

"What's going on now?" Galan asked.

Valia shrugged.

Suddenly Phineas' voice echoed through their ears again. "You are now entering the FC faze! The subject will now get to have the choice of changing their fate. All you have to do is make physical contact with the former self!"

Galan glanced at Valia. "So...all you gotta do is touch her, Val."

Valia stared at her 7-year-old version. She took a few robotic steps forward, then stopped. She glanced at the bench. Her mother and father sat there, looking at their handheld map of the zoo for a few minutes, not looking up when their 7-year-old daughter took a couple steps forward, into the middle of the sidewalk.

16-year-old Valia's expression became determined. She hurried toward her younger self. She reached out a hand. Galan leaned forward in anticipation. The crowd was pushing forward. Soon little Valia would be lost within it, and the trauma would begin. Teenage Valia would have to do it soon.

And suddenly teenage Valia pulled her hand away, turned around, and walked briskly back to Galan.

Galan stared at her, dumbfounded. "You just let her get away."

"I did."

"Why?" Galan gestured to her parents, who were now up and calling for the 7-year-old Valia. "You won't be afraid anymore. You'd be able to sleep and all that. You'd have a ton of friends."

"Not the one I _want_," Valia explained earnestly.

Galan's head reared, confused. "Huh?"

Valia, rolling her eyes and grinning, said, "Duh. If I gave up my fear I wouldn't have imagined Harry. Or gone to the docks every day while my parents looked for people who could get me out of my funk. So I wouldn't have gone that one day at that one moment and met _you_."

She hugged him.

"Who cares about some cheesy phobia? I can learn to sleep fine."

Galan stiffened for a second, cheeks burning. "What about that whole mess of friends you were talking about?"

"What's a whole mess of friends compared to one best friend?" Valia said. "'Specially if that one best friend is you, Galan."

Unable to contain his own grin, Galan hugged her back.

* * *

**(Author's Note: You guys, I'll be gone at camp from Monday (June 25th) to Saturday (June 30th). So no fics or Ask the OCs or Facebook or anything from me during next week! This chapter is dedicated to Cartega.)**


	9. Chapter 9

Autumn did _not _want to be back in that house, back in that room, with those two people. Not ever again. But now, of _course_, she had no choice. _I hate my life,_ she decided for the fortieth time _in_ the hated life.

Cody shimmered into existence beside her, expression blank.

"You guys still with us?" came Phineas' voice.

Autumn flinched, startled. "What did you do now?" she groaned, sounding a lot like Candace, cupping her hands around her mouth and speaking skyward. "Are there invisible speakers in my childhood torture chamber?"

"Eh, nope. Just monitoring you. There's a microphone in the Time Dome. Don't even remember installing it. Huh. We hardly ever make mistakes like that. Worth a scurrilous remark, huh, Ferb?"

Autumn raised an eyebrow. "Big words? Really? _Right _now?"

"It's on our List of _S _Words Seldom Used by Kids." Phineas' voice explained. "Finally got 'em all!"

"Okay, well can you _stop _monitoring us? Please?" Autumn's voice spiraled, desperate.

"Give us some space, dude," Cody added.

Autumn refused to give him the grateful glance she would have given him under different circumstances.

"We can't. Safety reasons," said Phineas.

Autumn moaned.

"Anyway," Phineas' voice went on brightly, "this is the point in history, apparently, that is your FC incident. So now you get to see what..."

"We've already been here," Autumn snapped. "Skip us to whatever's next."

If Phineas was startled or confused, his ever-chipper voice did not show it. "Okay."

Cody's eyes cut across the ground as it, and everything else, disappeared into blackness. Another scene faded into view.

"What now?"

"If the incident you already saw never happened," Phineas' voice commanded, "this is the part where you get to see what your life would be like."

"That one incident?" Autumn scoffed, rubbing her arms. "That was one in a thousand."

Cody's left eyebrow raised. "Phineas knows what he's doing." His tone was calm, soft.

"So I should trust him, too, right?" hissed Autumn, not even looking at him.

Cody didn't respond and instead took a good look around.

They appeared to be in the Park, Danville Park.

"_When_ are we?" Autumn called upward. "And can anybody see us?"

"Nobody can hear you or see you," Phineas' static-cling voice responded. "You're in the present; our time. Like I said: in the version of what your life would be like if the FC incident never happened. You know, I've gotta come up with a different way to say that. Repetition is kinda tedious, don't you think, Ferb?"

They waited.

"...You guys can't see him, but he's nodding."

Autumn rolled her eyes. "So my alternative life would have been the Park? Really?" But despite her monotone, the girl sounded more than a little interested.

Cody had his hands in his pocket. His head came up at a loud, bell-like laugh. He knew that laugh. It sounded care-free, though, this time.

There was a girl wearing a banana-pudding-yellow T-shirt and cream-colored sweatpants sitting in the grass, laughing her head off. Her long, caramel-brown hair was brushed to perfection, but it kept blowing into her face with the summer breeze, making her laugh turn into an annoyed giggle as she shoved it out of her line of vision. She was leaning on the palms of her hands, on a picnic blanket beneath a tree.

Beside the girl was a freckle-faced young man, at the very most the age of 26, with thick, spiky blonde hair and large hazel eyes that matched hers completely. He was crossing his eyes and making other silly faces at her, the cause of her joyful mirth. He wore a green T-shirt with the white silhouette of a T-Rex and a caption in white bubble-letters that said, _"If you're happy and you know it, clap your...oh." _He also had on baggy khaki pants and was barefoot.

Across from them, a woman of about 49 sat eating an apple and chuckling, wearing a white blouse with her caramel-colored hair in a long, long, _long _braid down her back and cotton, pool-blue pants that reached just over her knees and white sandals that fit her perfectly. Her eyes were the color of the evening sky, just as the sun illuminates the clouds in a pink-purple-blue splatter.

Beside Cody, Autumn caught her breath. "Mom."

Cody glanced at her. "Mom?"

Autumn nodded. Keeping her eyes on the people in the grass beside the pond, she took a few minutes to continue, awestruck. "Sh-She...she left when...when I was really young. Like, 3 or...or 4 I think. B-But she didn't look like this. She's..._happy_."

"So who's that?" Cody pointed to the young man, who was now tossing grapes into the air and catching them every time in his mouth.

Autumn's eyes filled with tears. "Adam," she said simply, as if this one name explained everything.

"Adam?" Cody raised both eyebrows suspiciously.

"He's my big brother," Autumn explained, swiping the tears away as she went on looking. "He left too, two days after Mom. He was...10, I think." She sniffled. "He wanted to take me with him the night after Mom left to go look for her. But my dad caught us. I woke up the next morning...a-and Adam wasn't there. So I w-waited...all day. You know," she said a bit bitterly, "in between hiding from my father. And he never came home. I-I don't know...wh-where he is..." her words became sobs, "or what he looks like now..."

"Yeah, you do," Cody said gently. He pointed. "Right there." He hoped this would be a form of reconciliation for her sorrow, but it seemed to make it worse.

"No!" Autumn shook her head wildly. "This is what he _would _look like. I-If my Mom had been brave and kicked Dad out of the house the first time he..." she couldn't finish. She kept crying. Then, as if feeling an urge to finish her explanation, she forced herself to go on, now making a large and strong effort to keep her voice steady. "But sh-she was scared. Everybody was. She said she wouldn't leave us. But in the end my Dad kicked her out. She promised she'd come back, but Dad must've done...o-or _said_ something really awful before she went, because she never did. And she _promised_."

Cody didn't mind when she hugged him. Who else did she have to seek comfort from? He didn't feel tough or emotionless or even witty right now. He felt completely helpless. He didn't know how to make things better for Autumn...

But Autumn wasn't finished. She didn't cry any longer. She seemed to have been talking herself into something. Cody had a feeling, an aching feeling, that he knew what it was.

Autumn went on, "A neighbor across the street...when I was 12. She finally called the cops on my Dad." She let out a grunt. "After all those years she lived by us. Took her sweet, stupid time. When I was sure he was gone for good, I told them everything he'd done. They asked me if I had any family I could go to. But I said...I said no. I remember that for sure. I lied. I told them I had nobody but my Dad. I didn't think they could find my Mom or Adam, and I guess didn't want them to. I didn't want anybody to. They were probably better off...without me. Besides, you can't find somebody who doesn't wanna be found, you know?"

Cody understood. To prove it, he nodded once.

This sign seemed to encourage her to continue. "They sent me to a foster home and I went to school until I was 15. Then I ran away. I-I couldn't live there. The people there didn't want me anyway. I'm not the greatest daughter." Autumn rubbed an arm. "I-I mean, that's just 'cuz couldn't trust them. They could tell, I guess. They took care of me fine, but that was it. I wouldn't let them get any closer. When I ran away, I...I had some money they gave me for college, but I used it to get a place of my own. In Danville."

Cody didn't say a word as the two of them stood side by side, watching Autumn's alternate life.

Phineas' voice was quiet when it came over the scene. "Now it'll take you back to the incident. In order to change your fate, you have to make physical contact with your former self."

The scene flashed away, and Autumn's eyes fell.

They were in Autumn's old house. But this time there were police sirens everywhere. The two teenagers were standing in the foyer. Autumn opened the front door and stepped out into her decaying front yard. Cody followed, still silent. Thinking.

"Take him away."

12-year-old Autumn, hair a rat's nest and wearing a gray, wrinkled T-shirt with silver pants, stood on the lawn watching her father as he was shoved into a police car in handcuffs and was driven away yelling curses.

"Can you tell us any more, sweetheart?" a woman officer went up to pre-teen Autumn and leaned down, eyes full of sympathy.

Little Autumn shook her head. "Where's he going?"

"Prison. He needs punishment for what he's done to you, hon."

Young Autumn nodded. Cody was stricken by the lack of emotion in the girl's face, the way her jaw was set firmly. Her eyes were like ice. That face should have been innocent at that age. Innocent and energetic.

"Is he gonna be back?"

"Over my dead body." A man, probably the woman's deputy, strolled up and put a hand on little Autumn's shoulder. "Any chance you have another relative somewhere out there? A mom? A cousin, maybe? Your grandpa?"

12-year-old Autumn acted as if his hand were snake fangs biting into her shoulder. She ducked backward, away from his touch. He took it in stride.

"Well?"

16-year-old Autumn tensed beside Cody. "This is where I lie and tell them no. And then they send me into foster care."

Time now appeared to slow, to drag. Phineas' voice could be heard. He cleared his throat a bit nervously. "Autumn, now's your chance to change your fate. Touch your early self at all, and you could have what you saw in the alternate life scene."

Autumn was rooted to the spot for the moment. She couldn't move. She seemed to be thinking, then her face hardened as if she had made I decision. "I'm..."

She nearly choked.

Cody was now beside her younger self, reaching out toward her with a hand. He was watching teenage Autumn as he did. She opened her mouth to say something.

Then he placed his hand on the 12-year-old Karmer girl's arm, eyes locked on 16-year-old Autumn.

Then everything flashed white.


	10. Chapter 10

**(Author's Note: Guys, this is important. So I went to the Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters camp in Andrews, South Carolina, on Snowbird mountain from Monday to Saturday {just got back yesterday}. SWO for short. Maybe some of my Christian readers have been there. It's intense. They unplug you from everything back home, take you into this non-air-conditioned-cabin type environment, and then they have you do recs {recreations, things to do on-campus and off-campus} that drain you physically so you can focus on God and Jesus mentally; a place to learn your identity in Christ and figure out what He wants to teach you. I have a gift in writing, but I'm using it all wrong. I do it for my own pleasure, really. For fun. That's not what's important. I need to glorify my Savior in everything I do. It's why I'm still breathing today. I belong to Christ, and that means that I need to focus on Him and what He wants. I haven't been. I've put the computer...this stupid hunk of machinery...in the place of my God and my King. And that's wrong on too many levels. I need to rethink my attention. I need to redirect it. So I'm disciplining myself. One hour on the computer a day at best. Maybe an extra hour on special occasions to write my novel. So I'm not updating as fast as I normally would anymore. If you need details or more info on the reason why, please private message me. I'd be more than happy to explain it a tad more thoroughly to you if you're curious. ~Doverstar)  
**

* * *

**Exactly 5 minutes and 30 seconds earlier...**

Phineas, Ferb and company were in the Time Dome, the huge black room and blinking green lights still transfixing its guests. Phineas and Ferb were at a large screen, watching the events as Autumn and Cody saw them.

When the FC moment came, Phineas adjusted his earpiece microphone and pinched it with two fingers, clearing his throat before saying, "Autumn, now's your chance to change your fate. Touch your early self at all, and you could have what you saw in the alternate life scene."

Autumn, on screen, seemed to hesitate. In that space of time, Cody had made his way over to Autumn's early version of herself.

Phineas tensed. He took off his earpiece and glanced at Ferb. "Wait," he said, frowning for once. "What happens if _Cody _does it?"

Ferb pulled out his cell phone and began making complicated calculations. Baljeet, Buford, Isabella, Galan, and Valia were all glued to the screen.

"He's gonna do it!" Buford shouted.

Ferb's head came up. "Stop him," he ordered to Phineas.

"How come?"

"Look." Ferb gave him the calculations.

Phineas' eyes widened. He grabbed his earpiece and put it back on. "Cody, stop, you can't be the one to do it! Cody!" He winced. "Static. That's all I hear," he announced to the group.

Suddenly the screen filled with the flash of white.

"Get Autumn out of there!" Phineas ordered.

"What about Cody?" Isabella asked, confused.

Phineas didn't answer. He instead did it himself, pushing one of those dramatically-large buttons. Autumn disintegrated on the spot. She reappeared a moment later behind the group in the Time Dome.

"Autumn? Autumn?" Isabella waved a hand in front of her face.

"Is she sleepwalking or something?" Valia asked. "Wait, she's not sleeping. Or walking. She's just standing there. Is she stand...sleep...not sleeping...um..."

While Valia tried to figure that one out, the gang crowded around the rescued teenager.

Autumn snapped out of it, blurting, "What just happened?"

"Cody went on with the FC action while you were making up your mind," Ferb explained.

"So I should be in the alternate life, right?" Autumn demanded.

"Not if Cody did it," Phineas began nervously. "See, _you _have to be the one to do it for yourself. If he does it, it would only effect what _his _life would be like if you had done the Fate Changing thing at that moment instead."

"So what would it be like?" Galan inquired. "Please tell me he loses the sarcasm."

"Shut _up_," Autumn snapped.

Galan put his palms up innocently.

"Where _is _he?" Autumn glanced at Phineas pleadingly. "You can bring him back, right?"

"Probably." Phineas said, shrugging. "I guess."

Isabella elbowed him, noticing Autumn's horrified expression.

Phineas backtracked quickly. "I mean," he started, "I-I never really thought this out. I was kinda distracted with other feelings when...when I made the blueprints."

Isabella glanced at Ferb, but Ferb was too busy reading over his own calculations and adding new ones.

"Anyway, if we go to that alternate universe now by adding a few new coordinates to the FC Mode, I think we can find him..." Phineas began muttering to himself, moving toward the vending-machine control panel.

Ferb gave his stepbrother his phone again. "Way ahead of you," he said quietly.

"Ferb, have I told you lately you're my favorite brother?" Phineas teased. "Now we don't have to start from scratch. That would've been a valuable 45 seconds wasted."

"45 _seconds_?" Valia said, amazed.

"We work fast."

Phineas tapped the screen of Ferb's phone, feeding the data into the vending-machine control panel. "Okay, now we _should_ start spinning if all goes according to, y'know, plan..."

All went according to plan.

They began spinning faster and faster, until suddenly stopping. Autumn realized they weren't _in _the Time Dome anymore. They were in the hallway of a school.

Valia took a deep breath in through the nose. She began counting on her fingers:

"Rubber sneakers, sweaty jock uniforms, over-perfumed cheerleading outfits, lockers full of three-month-old lucky socks..." Valia glanced at them, announcing dramatically, "Brace yourselves. We're in a high school!"

They all groaned.

"I thought it was _summer_!" Buford scoffed.

"Maybe we're a month earlier than the present. Ferb?" Phineas glanced at his stepbrother.

Ferb checked his handy-dandy phone, which was rapidly turning into everyone's very best friend because of its abilities. "Two months, actually. But nevertheless."

"Joy." Autumn grunted.

She had landed a few feet away from the rest of the group, her back against the lockers. She felt dizzy.

"Dude, I don't wanna pry," came a dry, trying-really-hard-not-to-laugh-my-aglets-off-at-you voice above them. "But, uh, I couldn't help but notice you're on the floor."

"Bright of you," muttered Autumn testily to the stranger, her back to him, pushing her hair out of her face.

"Need a hand?"

A hand stuck out to assist her.

Autumn stood up herself, ignoring it. "I'm fine." She was having a bad to terrible to awful to unbearble to I'm-gonna-rip-your-eyelashes-out day.

Until she recognized the stranger. Then she just became confused.

It was Cody, she was sure. Clearly. But he looked so different somehow. His messy hair wasn't as messy as usual. It wasn't perfectly combed or cut either. In fact, it almost looked the same. _I think. _And his outfit was different. He was wearing a red T-shirt with white long-sleeves underneath it. The shirt wasn't pale in color, either. His pants were blue jeans, and he wore brand-new-looking red-and-white converse shoes. His eyes were bright and calm.

Autumn opened her mouth to say something, then started to actually think about her situation. Phineas had told her that this was the reality where only _Cody's _life was affected if she had made the decision not to lie to the officers about her other family. Would he even know who she was? Sure, the way her life would've been if she'd done the FC thing would've worked out great concerning her brother and her mom, but what about Cody? Would she ever have befriended him at all? Funny, the machine hadn't showed them _that _bit.

Nevertheless, Autumn knew just how to test it. She brushed herself off. "Thanks, Cody."

His eyebrows pinched in confusion. "Uh, you know my name?"

Autumn's heart nearly quit beating right there. Her best friend didn't recognize her! Was this permanent? So he really _didn't _know her now...

Then Phineas came forward, all bright and optimistic. And of course, what he said was perfectly reasonable and helped everything:

"Hi there! We're from an alternate reality. I'm Phineas, and this is my brother, Ferb."

Cody's eyes flashed something that made him look almost like the original. Distrust. Usually Autumn's department, but it worked with him too. "Say that again?"

Galan muzzled Phineas while Ferb stuck out his hand.

"It's time travel," he said slowly in his British accent. "You'll get used to it."

Cody refused to shake it and stuck his hands in his jean pockets. "Right. Whatever, dude." He gave them another amused look, such a carefree expression that it made Autumn wonder what could possibly have altered his life so much if she had made the FC decision.

Her answer came shortly afterward.

Phineas ducked away from Galan and rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry about that. Jumping from alter..."

Isabella elbowed him gently.

Phineas backtracked, scratching at his ear furiously as he jabbered, "I-I mean, jumping from, uh, _classrooms _like that is pretty exhausting."

"We were almost late for our next class," Baljeet added.

Everyone glanced at him, surprised that he would contribute to the lie.

"Busy, busy, busy." Phineas nodded nervously.

Cody's eyebrows raised suspiciously. "It's lunch time."

"Right!" Valia popped up, shaking Cody's hand by bobbing it up and down rapidly. "We go to lunch and do our homework. There. So we have, like, free time when we get home. But we're new! So it's the first day here. And, wait for it, and we decided we'd do the work there all together. Just randomly."

Cody stared at her.

"I'm Valia!" Valia added, smiling.

Galan pulled her away by the shoulders.

"Yeah," Isabella said sweetly. "And we sort of went too fast down the hall and...just...ended up on the floor."

Cody leaned backward. "Uh huh."

Autumn wanted to facepalm right there.

Cody glanced at Phineas for about the third time. "Uh...listen, you look...I think I know you."

Phineas blinked twice. "You do."

The Danville gang glared at him.

Phineas seemed to remember where and when he was again and backtracked. "I think."

"What did you say your name was?" Cody demanded.

"It's Phineas."

"Last name?"

"Flynn. Phineas Flynn."

Cody visibly winced. He hesitated, then turned on his heel, stiffening up. "I gotta go."

"What's the rush?" muttered Buford. "Ain't every day ya get t'talk to a group of crazy people."

Galan snickered.

"Soon as school's over, I gotta go home." Cody explained over his shoulder.

They all just watched him, waiting for him to continue.

Cody turned around and walked backwards just long enough to say:

"My Mom's gonna be worried if I'm late."


	11. IMPORTANT Author's Note! Need your help!

**Gosh. I hate interrupting the story like this, but as of now, July 3rd, I have a few things you and me (yes, you, reader!) need to discuss here through reviews!**

**First of all, let me get some random stuff from camp out that I think some of you might find fun:**

**You guys, since most (but certainly not all) of my real-life pals won't find this as awesome as we nerdy-fantastically-weird people do, I decided I'd see what you thought about this! So I was at camp, and we were at the Snack Shack, sitting at a picnic table, and all of a sudden one of the young counselors comes up and greets us. He was wearing red and black, with brown hair (granted, he had a goatee, but so does every guy at Snowbird). He introduced himself as...wait for it..._CODY_. How whacky is that? I was, inwardly, having a spaz moment. He looked the way Cody would look if he were a bit older and, well, homeless, thus the goatee. If he were real, you know, and not in a PnF cartoon style...yeah. Plus I saw this OTHER counselor who looked to be, like, 19 or something and he looked EXACTLY AND TO THE LETTER like Jesse Mccartney (Disney Channel's first really big star) recently! Same eyes, same hair, same face, same everything! Except he was super-duper tall. Like, his legs should not fit with the rest of him. But other than that, I was fascinated. I was like, "Total phenomenon moment here. I must study this specimen." Yeah, I can be creepy too. Try not to judge me. But I mean, it felt like an out-of-this-world experience. Think about it, reader! How often do you get to see a real live actor/singer look-alike? Whenever that happens, I find it just lol-worthy. Yes, I used that term. See, at SWO the counselors are beyond mentally ill. Crazy about Jesus, all ready to have an obnoxious good time. So when you go in for worship, Christian rap music is playing in the coop so loud it rattles your spine. And all the counselors are dancing like _nuts _on stage. It's insane. Literally. So the Jesse Mccartney counselor (found out from MY counselor that week that his name is Jake) hops up on stage with everyone else and dances to Tobymac's _Jesus Freak_ and then he starts mouthing the words and doing that thing where you hold up one hand to your mouth like a microphone and reach your other arm out to the audience. AND HE PRACTICALLY _WAS _JESSE MCCARTNEY RIGHT THEN. He looked _just _like him! I laughed so hard. I found it hysterical. Thankfully the music was loud, so people didn't hear me. Heh...  
**

**Okay, on to business.  
**

**So after this story, _It's About Time_, I need to know something. See, I'm writing Phineas and Ferb fanfics, but I feel like my OCs, however popular and fun to write, are getting in the way too much. It's a _Phineas and Ferb _fanfic, and there's not enough Phineas and there's not enough Ferb! Used to be that my OCs were created just to get something new out of Phineas and the gang, but now it's the other way around and I'm stuck! I mean, you guys _must _be missing the Phinabella and Ferbnessa and all that, right? Right? Dude, I barely even include _Perry _anymore! Aaaah!  
**

**So I need your help. And please don't say, "You're the author, it's your decision. I'll like it either way!" Because that's totally sweet and incredibly encouraging and lights a nice, scalding fire under my ego, but I can't hear it on this! I need your opinion:  
**

**In the next chapter-by-chapter story, should I take out the OCs (even Cody and Autumn) completely?  
**

**And so I have an idea of what you wanna see in the next story...tell me. What do you wanna see in the next story?  
**

**Please answer BOTH questions and tell me everything you think in a review! IMMEDIATELY, you buzzers! Sorry, hyper writer here. It's late.  
**

**~Doverstar  
**


	12. Chapter 11

**(Author's Note: Read this! Wow, guys, your reviews to that question really helped me in my confusion. The majority of you agreed with me and said that Phineas and the gang should get the spotlight again, because frankly, my OCs are stealing it! Without intention. So thank you! Seriously, that helped. I will indeed remove the OCs' spotlight and pin it back on the show's original characters. More Phinabella sounds incredibly refreshing to me. **

**Plus, you guys need to check out my deviantART account. It's still my Doverstar username. I plan on drawing my OCs again there soon {Cody's official more-PnF-looking design is finished!}. Also, I'm taking down the ones I drew because they suck at life, so...yeah. ^^ Anywho, I'll be putting up more pics of my PnF fics up there real soon, so make sure you've either got a DA account by then or are watching for it! ...If you want.**

**P.S., to the user titled in my e-mails as "Anonymous"...heh, he called himself Mr. Ranty, I believe, and indeed went on a rant which I found interesting and fun to read, I didn't get your e-mail! I'm sorry. It didn't show up! You wanted me to "drop you a line", but I can't if I wanted to because the e-mail neglected to show itself. So if you still want me to drop you a line, you may wanna repeat that. Thanks! ~Doverstar)**

* * *

"Decisions, decisions," Phineas rubbed his chin. They were back in the Time Dome, watching the new Cody's occupation on a large screen as they stood around arguing. Cody was apparently to weirded out to eat; he sat in his school's cafeteria just pushing his food around his plate.

"What decisions?" Isabella asked.

Autumn nodded. "Yeah, no contest. We get him outta there and change it back to the way it was before."

"Do _you _want that?" Isabella glanced at her sympathetically. "I mean, you could have a better life if you kept it the way it is."

"In case you haven't noticed, Firestorm Girl," Autumn glared at her, "My life _hasn't _changed. Cody's did."

Isabella folded her arms. "First of all," she snapped, "it's Fire_side _Girl. And I'm not 11 years old anymore, for your information." She softened. "Second of all...I know you're hurting, but you have to think about this first. If Cody hadn't done it for you, you would've done it anyway."

Autumn's eyes came up. "No," she said slowly. "I wouldn't have. I didn't want to. I decided it was better this way."

"Why?"

Autumn looked away. "Because. If I'd told those stupid officers I had other family, they could've found my Mom and my brother and I'd move in with them." She fought tears. She was _not _going to cry again. It was already too emotionally draining. "I wouldn't have come to Danville and met Cody."

Isabella glanced at Valia, who was nodding. Obviously Valia knew what Autumn meant. She'd given up her own chance of a better life to keep Galan as her best friend. And even though Isabella was crazy about Phineas Flynn, if she'd been in Autumn's situation, she would've concluded that having her family back, happy and secure together, would've been better than any boy.

"Well," Isabella sighed, "I guess the decision's made, Phineas. We have to change everything."

Phineas looked up, jumping a little as if she'd interrupted some very important thoughts. "Right," he agreed. "Got the coordinates, Ferb?"

Ferb blinked lazily at him. "Do I really have to answer?" he teased, pressing a button.

Moments later they were in the cafeteria, all sitting around the table Cody was at.

Cody froze with the plastic fork halfway to his mouth. He snorted. "There goes my appetite."

"Chill," Autumn said. "It's not as weird as it's going to be. Look, this is...really hard to explain, but..."

Ferb slapped a hand over Phineas' mouth just before the redhead could take over.

Autumn went on, staring intently at Cody, "We need you to come with us."

Cody raised an eyebrow, looking curious. "Uh-huh. Where?"

"You'll see."

* * *

"Try not to freak out, by the way," Autumn said.

"Why would I freak out?" Cody scoffed. "I'm standin' in a janitor's closet with eight insane teenagers. And that includes the guy I think I used to know holding a remote." He jabbed a thumb at Phineas.

"Everything'll make sense soon, Cody," Phineas promised. "Everybody ready?"

Everyone nodded or muttered their agreement.

"Okay, here we go!" Phineas pressed the button.

Immediately they were sucked into the Time Dome.

"Nice tractor-beam effect, by the way," Phineas said when they were fully inside, elbowing Ferb. "Very UFO."

Ferb gave a bow.

Cody was glancing around with disbelief written all over his face. Then he whipped around and glared at the group, counting off of his fingers one by one. "One: where are we? Two: who the heck are _you_ guys anyway? And three: I'm not allowed to talk to aliens. Let me out."

Phineas threw an arm around him cheerfully. "_Uno_: You're in a time machine of sorts created by myself and my stepbrother, Ferb. We call it the Time Dome._ Dos_: We're your friends from an alternate reality. And finally, _tres_: We're not aliens and you can't leave yet."

Autumn groaned.

Cody raised an eyebrow. "I'm not freaking out. I'm confused. But not freakin' out."

"Then this'll only tantalize your curiosity." Phineas pulled a red handle on the side of a wall.

A holographic beam of light shot up out of the floor in neon green, showing the original Cody, frozen in the usual pose, hands inside his black jacket's pocket, emotionless expression on his face.

Cody stared at the other version of himself. He folded his arms. "Dude looks familiar."

"He should. It's you." Valia told him.

Cody grunted.

"It is," Autumn insisted. "It's...well, how you were before."

"Before what?" Cody asked.

"Before you...Phineas, I need help here!" Autumn threw up her arms, Candace-style, and stormed off to the side, overwhelmed with how to explain it all.

Phineas strolled up casually. "No problem. Cody, that _is _you." He thought about it for a moment, then went on, "Tell us a little about your Mom, would you please?"

Cody's eyes softened. "Her name's Felicity Bannister. She's got curly brown hair."

Phineas nodded.

"And she rhymes when she's excited."

Phineas and Ferb both nodded now.

"She loves the color blue. And she loves reading, especially when it's raining." Cody shrugged.

By now everyone had been nodding.

Phineas raised an eyebrow. "Anything else?"

Cody raised an eyebrow back.

"Perhaps regarding her health?" Ferb added.

Cody glanced at him. "What about it?" He paused. "She was...really sick a while back. When I was five, I guess, it happened. She was getting better by the time I was 11. And now she's fully recovered. Doctors found a cure or whatever. As long as we could keep her from getting too stressed out, she lasted longer." He seemed confused. "Uh, why do you need to know?"

Phineas exchanged a glance with Isabella. "What if...something had happened when you were 11? What if it stressed her out too much and she had to be taken away for a while because...well, because her condition grew worse and worse?"

Cody leaned backward. "But it didn't."

Phineas was confused for the moment. How had Autumn's FC moment, her decision, shaped the later, eventual death of Felicity Bannister? They were getting close. He was reminded of the Sherlock Holmes series his sister had read when she'd been 15.

"But what if it _did_?" Isabella asked. "And she...she didn't make it in the end?"

Cody took a deep breath at the thought. "But it _didn't_ happen. Look, what do you want? Why am I here? And why should I believe you anyway?"

"Because we're your friends," Autumn said. "We're trying to explain."

"Now quit yappin' an' listen up, Bannister!" Buford ordered, getting frustrated.

"Cody," Phineas said calmly, "that version of you up there is the version _we _know. What _really _happened. That version of you is the one that had to go through the lack of his real mom for half his life. He had to spend five years moving from foster home to foster home because his mom...well, y'know, _your _mom...couldn't take care of you."

Cody was now glaring at his alternate self. "What happened?" he spat. "What made her go?"

"Oh, _now_ he believes us," Baljeet muttered. Luckily Cody didn't hear him.

"Somebody broke into your house when you were 11," Phineas went on. "I-In _our _universe. According to what you said, it must've stressed her out so much that...well, I don't know the details, but she had to be taken away to the hospital. She never did get well enough to go back to you."

Cody didn't speak. He just stared. Then, finally, he said, "So I end up like that?" he gestured to the hologram. "I look like a jerk."

"No! Then your foster agent took you to Danville," Isabella broke in, smiling.

Ferb slid his hands into his pants' pockets. "Resulting in your reuniting with your old friends."

"The Flynn family," Baljeet added.

Phineas folded his arms and grinned at Cody. "And you got to _stay_ in town."

"And then ya hung out with us all the time," Buford put in.

"We have so much fun!" Valia squealed.

"And you met Autumn," Galan elbowed Autumn.

Autumn blushed. "Yeah."

Cody blinked at her, a dozen questions in his eyes.

"And you're funny and sarcastic," Valia began counting off of _her _fingers.

"Witty," Galan nodded.

"A real pain sometimes," Buford grumbled with a sly smirk.

"But a great friend." Phineas finished.

Everyone gazed at Cody.

"_That's_ how you end up," Autumn told him softly.

Cody had his own hands in his pants' pockets, Ferb-style, and his head was low. He looked at them dismally out of the top of his eyes. "But my mom dies."

The smiles fell.

"Yeah." Phineas rubbed his neck. "Eventually. But Cody, the world you've been living in isn't how it happened. It's different because of the machine we're in now."

Cody looked pretty freaked out now. He took in another deep breath and asked, "What do you mean?"

"The machine has a program called the FC Faze," Phineas started. "FC stands for..."

"Fried Chicken?" Cody guessed, raising both eyebrows now.

Phineas smirked. "Har har. No, it stands for Fate Change. In the FC Faze, the machine takes you to a pivotal moment in your past and shows you a certain decision you made then. It shows you what your life _would _be like if you had made a different decision. Then it gives you a choice. You can either stay as you are or change your fate by making physical contact with your former self."

"So I made physical contact with my former self," Cody guessed.

"Uh, no. Not exactly." Phineas rubbed his ear, not because he was lying this time, but because he was getting a tad nervous. "See, Autumn went into the FC Faze. You...your other self...went with her." He glanced at Autumn respectfully.

Autumn stepped forward, approaching Cody, hugging herself as usual. "Let's just say my past isn't roses and sunshine. It sucked. Big time. It was awful and horrible and if I remember correctly, when you saw it with me in this stupid machine..."

Phineas winced.

"...you weren't all that happy about it." Autumn huffed. "I guess you didn't want me to have to live that way. So when the time came for me to make a different decision in the FC moment or whatever..._you _touched my former self instead. You made the decision for me."

"A selfless act, to be sure," Ferb added gently, "but apparently it didn't work out the way you anticipated."

Cody glanced between Ferb and Autumn, still confused. "What happened?"

"As a result, only _you _were affected." Ferb said.

"Your reality changed to what it would have been like if Autumn had made a different choice," Phineas cut in.

"But how does her changing everything make my mom live in the end?" Cody blustered. "It's not..."

"Doesn't make sense, I know," Phineas shrugged. "Still trying to work that out." He raised his eyes. "But the question now is: How do we get the old you back?"


	13. Chapter 12

"So we have to get back to that moment in...er, out...whatever...that point in time where Cody touched Autumn's other self." Isabella put her hands on her hips triumphantly. "Right, Phineas?"

She glanced around the Time Dome. The redhead was no where to be seen. "Phineas?"

Ferb pointed. Phineas was sitting to the right of the vending-machine control system, arms hanging over his brought-up knees. Isabella exchanged a worried glance with the green-haired teenager and the two of them hurried over.

"Phineas?" Isabella repeated. "What's wrong?"

Phineas looked up at them in despair. "Cody's right. The Time Dome is ruining everything. It's my fault."

Isabella was confused. Phineas never doubted his inventions or ideas. And he certainly didn't put them down like this. The things he'd seen must've gotten to him. Phineas wasn't easily sobered up.

"It's not your fault," she protested immediately. "Come on, _you _didn't think the Time Dome would do all this stuff."

"It doesn't matter, Izzie. _I _built it. I should've been more responsible with its programming. It's become self-aware! Autumn saw what she didn't want to see. So did Valia. And we may never get Cody back." Phineas' eyebrows dipped. "The real Cody, I mean."

"Not necessarily," Ferb said quietly. "I don't recall 'never' being in our vocabulary."

"Exactly!" Isabella added. "And good things came out of this too, Phineas. Look at Valia and Galan! They're closer. Now he knows she'll always be his friend and she knows he won't leave her alone. Right?"

Ferb nodded.

Phineas' eyes lifted. "But...the bad's outweighing the good." The statement was reluctant.

Ferb held out a hand. "Well. As far as I can see, there's still time to tip the scales, isn't there?"

Isabella's turn to nod came. She did so rapidly and enthusiastically, grinning.

Phineas' smile grew across his triangular face and he took Ferb's hand with new vigor. Ferb pulled him to his feet.

"Ferb, I know what _else_ we're gonna do today!"

"Hang on," Cody was suddenly beside them. "Ever think I might not _want _to blip out of existence?"

Phineas and Ferb exchanged a glance. "But it was a mistake to have your life altered," Phineas explained apologetically. "Er, the old you. The...the original you. The first one. Um..."

Ferb cleared his throat. "It was involuntary and unexpected. Therefore, a mishap. It shouldn't have happened."

"But in that other life my mom _dies_." Cody snapped. "What, you think I _want _that?"

"But Cody, we _have _to get the other you back. We have to figure out how Autumn's choice would affect your mom's death," Phineas argued. "Then when we figure it out, you...erm, well, the original you...can make the decision on whether you want to change it or not."

"How?"

"We'll put you in the FC Faze."

Cody scratched at the back of his hair, looking down. "Yeah, fine. But do it _fast_. Something tells me changing my entire lifestyle isn't exactly gonna _tickle_."

"Right," Phineas nodded.

"Are you saying it's gonna hurt?" Cody raised an eyebrow.

"Are you?" Phineas raised one himself.

"O-kay!" Isabella clapped her hands. "Tick tock, tick tock, huh, Phineas?"

"Right!" repeated Phineas, whipping around, finger in the air. "Again, Ferb..."

"You know what we're gonna do today, we get it," Buford groaned. "Can we speed this thing up? I'm starvin'!"

"What, all of a sudden?" Baljeet muttered.

"Nah. I've been hungry since 1937, dude!"

"Well, while San Fransisco food _is _pretty darn good," Phineas put in, looking over his shoulder as he and Ferb stood by the controls, "we oughta take care of this first, don't you think?"

Ferb nodded twice.

"Okay, but you're buyin' me a burger when we get back!" Buford warned.

"A milkshake for me!" Galan added with a grin.

"And I am suddenly craving a plate of Chinese rice," Baljeet scratched his head.

"I want fries, a chicken sandwich, an egg McMuffin, twelve bowls of chicken noodle soup, some ice cream in a cone, grape soda..."

"Shut up, Valia, you're makin' it worse!" Buford howled.

Cody was watching them with an overwhelmed and confused expression on his face, however amused, when Autumn joined him.

"They're not so bad once you get used to them," Autumn informed him, eyes on her laughing group of friends as they listed imaginary food orders to irritate Buford. Autumn grunted. "Listen to me, would you? You're usually the one telling _me _that."

Cody glanced at her. "No offense," he said kindly, "but who exactly _are _you to me? The 'original' me." He made a disgusted look.

Autumn tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously and looked away, giving a sheepish smile. "Um...I'm..."

Cody's eyebrows raised. "Don't tell me I have a sister."

Autumn laughed. "No!" She stopped. "At least, I don't think so. I'm your...uh, let's just call me your best friend."

"What else would we call you?" Cody said, still confused.

"If Phineas works things out, you'll see." Autumn shrugged.

"Okay!" Phineas called. "Autumn, you're going back into the FC Faze!"

Autumn looked startled. "What?"

"Yep!" Phineas folded his arms. "This might sound a bit cliche, but it's the only way."

"Bum bum bummmm!" Buford added.

Autumn glared at the teenage bully but said nothing to him, turning her attention back to the redheaded inventor. "Why?"

"You just have to _not _touch your former self. Leave things be in that point in your past," Phineas began. "And then things will go back to normal and _this _Cody," Phineas gestured to Cody, "will be replaced with _our _Cody."

"That's the only way?" Autumn glanced at Cody to Phineas.

"That's the only way." Phineas lifted his chin triumphantly. "Unless, y'know, you wanna keep this Cody here."

Cody looked everywhere but directly at someone.

Autumn sighed. "Fine. Let's go."

* * *

**(Author's Note: Obscenely short, I know. ...No excuse. But the next chapter I will be working on immediately! Please give detailed reviews; I feel like I'm losing you guys! Probably due to my laziness.)**


	14. Chapter 13

"Any chance you have another relative somewhere out there? A mom? A cousin, maybe? Your grandpa?"

16-year-old Autumn opened her eyes. She was back in the FC moment. Her younger self was ducking away from the officer's hand as the cab drove her father to jail and out of sight.

"Well?" asked the officer.

Older Autumn glanced up. "Phineas?"

"Just don't do anything." Phineas' voice answered.

"O-Okay." Autumn shivered. _Not only do I hate my life, _she decided again, _but I **really **hate time_ _travel_.

Younger Autumn slowly shook her head after a moment's hesitation. "No." She blinked. "No one."

Phineas, up in the Time Dome watching the scene from a screen, glanced at Cody. "Ready to blip?"

Cody narrowed his eyes. "Is that a joke? Seriously?"

"Could be." Phineas shrugged.

"I remember you, you know," Cody said, resting his elbows on the control counter, his back to the screen.

Phineas glanced at him. "You do?"

Cody nodded. "Phineas Flynn. I knew you when I was little."

Phineas nodded back, grinning. "Yeah, exactly."

"So did the other me remember you lied and left me in the dust too, or was that different like everything else?"

Phineas stiffened. "Uh...y-yeah. He remembered. Cody, look, I didn't...heh." He let out a nervous, isn't-this-just-great chuckle. "Thing is, I already explained this to you."

"Yeah. Other me, right?" Cody scoffed, sounding skeptical.

"Eh, yeah. A-And he was mad too."

"I'm not mad. Need some time to think. But I'm not mad yet."

"Yet?"

"Yet. 'Course, it won't matter if I don't exist anymore, right?"

Phineas paused and stared at him. "About that...what makes you so...what's the word? _Tolerant _of what we're about to do to you?"

Cody stood upright and shrugged. "You made it sound like things would get better even if my mom died."

"They do," Phineas said gently. "Your life isn't supposed to be perfect, C-Man."

Cody blinked at him. "C-Man?"

"Nickname. For the..."

"Other me, got it." Cody sighed. "Look, I guess if...if my _other _self didn't mean to change his life..."

"He meant to change Autumn's. For the better," Phineas interrupted helpfully.

"Yeah, whatever. If he didn't mean to change it, I guess I owe it to 'myself' to get the other life back. I mean, it _must_ get better if he's okay with Mom..." Cody didn't finish. He looked away. Then he glanced back at Phineas, gaze steely. "Just figure out why she died. As a favor to me, 'kay?"

Phineas nodded. "I promise."

"Anyway," Cody finished, "I'm gonna try to trust you." He literally put on a brave face. "You have your reasons for completely forgetting me. And my other self forgave you, apparently."

Phineas winced. "Apparently."

"'Sides, if you said you'd be back..." Cody glanced sideways at Phineas, "...'like the stars'...then you were right." He gestured with a hand to the redhead. "You're back."

Phineas chuckled.

Cody shrugged. "So I have reason to trust you with this. I did it once. I can do it again."

Phineas just grinned as a direct answer. Then he turned back to the screen, finishing their conversation with, "All things said and done...man, you are _definitely _a different Cody."

Cody gave a goofy bow.

Phineas winked. Then he spoke into his mic. "All right, Autumn, now prepare yourself. We'll beam you back up here." He pulled the mic off. "Ferb?"

Ferb pressed a button. Autumn was pulled out of time and into the Dome.

"It can't be that easy," Autumn spluttered.

"What can't?"

Everyone turned to Cody. He was now wearing his black jacket, red T-shirt faded and pants ripped up below the knees. His hair was messier and his eyes a tad more haunted. He was gazing at his hand, twisting it as he brought it up to his nose to examine it, as if confused.

"You're back!" Autumn jittered in place. "We did it."

Cody messed his hair even more with a hand. "Think I blacked out for a second."

"Remember much?" Phineas strolled over to his old friend, throwing his arm around him.

"I was in that stupid FC thing with Autumn," Cody jerked his head to Autumn. "Huh. Thought I touched her early self or whatever, but..."

"You did," Isabella explained.

"Yeah, and you messed everythin' up!" Buford added.

Cody raised an eyebrow. He snorted, rolling his eyes. "Please accept my humble apologies." A loud rumble issued. "Dude, was that your stomach?" He glanced at Buford.

"I'm _famished_, Bannister!" Buford growled.

Cody put a hand up. "Buzz Cut just used a big word. I _did _mess something up, didn't I?"

Isabella giggled.

"See, when you touched Autumn's former self, only _your _reality was affected," Phineas said. "I'm getting kinda tired of explaining this." He grinned apologetically.

"So..." Cody glanced between Autumn and Phineas. "Uh, how'd that go?"

"You might wanna sit down for this," Galan warned.

Cody looked surprised. "Yeah?"

Phineas nodded. "It's your mom."

Cody blinked. "Still not making sense. Try again."

"In the alternate reality. She's...she's alive."

Cody's pupils grew. He ran a hand through his hair. "_What_?"

"The other you was a bit more articulate," Ferb added. "And therefore more willing to communicate."

"Yeah. He told us your mom's condition would have gotten worse if she was stressed out. And by the time you...the alternate you...were 11, it was getting better, and eventually they found a cure." Phineas inhaled.

Cody seemed to put the pieces together on his own. "When I was 11 somebody broke in. It stressed her out so much she had to be moved. She didn't get better."

"So Autumn's decision somehow played a part in the break-in?" Baljeet wondered aloud.

Cody raised his eyes and looked at Autumn out of the tops of them. "Looks like it."

"Cody, I was 10 back then," Autumn told him. "I didn't break into your house."

"You've done it before," Cody argued.

"Only once."

"At _Phineas' _house."

"I know. I was desperate. But I didn't do it this time!"

"Prove it!"

"Cody!"

"Okay, stop," Isabella commanded, pushing herself in between them. Cody was breathing like a mad bull, while Autumn was staring hard at him, appalled he would accuse her of such a thing. Isabella put her hands on her hips. "You can't prove anything yet, so there's no point in arguing."

"Actually," Phineas interrupted. "We can."

"Quite easily," Ferb agreed.

Isabella glanced at the Flynn-Fletchers and then back to Cody and Autumn. She threw her hands in the air in defeat. "I take it back, there's a point in arguing."

Autumn and Cody took her word for it and proceeded to continue their angry banter.

"I didn't break in! I was _10_!"

"So who the heck _did_?"

"How should I know? It's not my fault!"

"Then how is it that when you made the different decision..."

"_I _didn't! _You _did!"

"Excuse me for trying to make sure you got a better deal," Cody glared at her, eyes full of venom.

"I don't need your help!" Autumn shot back.

The group watched them with their pupils darting from one to the other as if watching the ball in a ping-pong match.

"So, what? You didn't _want _the other life?"

"What if I did? It wasn't your choice! It was mine."

"Then why didn't_ you _make it?"

"For _you_, you idiot!" Autumn snapped.

Cody stopped glaring at her, confused, but still seemed angry.

"It was pretty clear in that perfect other life that _you _weren't a part of it, Cody," Autumn's rage faltered. "So I didn't wanna make a different decision. My life's okay now the way it is. What's the point in changing it, huh?"

Cody was silent, staring at her. The rest of the gang were glancing down or at each other awkwardly.

Phineas and Ferb had been working with the controls the entire time. Now Phineas called out, "Eureka! Hang on to your hats, gang, we've got the coordinates!"

"Somebody's enjoying himself," Galan muttered, elbowing Valia.

"What hats?" Buford asked.

"Where are we going?" Isabella put in.

"To the past," Ferb told them.

"We're gonna find out who broke in to Cody's old house," Phineas folded his arms.

"How's that solving anything?" Cody grunted.

"You wanna know who's responsible, don't you?" Phineas raised an eyebrow.

Cody nodded, but before he could say anything, Isabella interrupted:

"Wait a minute!" Isabella looked at Cody despairingly. "I know it's awful, but I mean, come on! Do you _really_want to know? I mean, what can you do to the person? Whoever it was has it pretty bad themselves or they wouldn't have to break into somebody else's house in the first place."

"Especially Cody's," Buford rumbled.

Cody raised a brow at Buford quizzically.

"What?" Buford shrugged. "You're always sayin' it was a dump."

"It was," Cody admitted. He glanced at Isabella. "Whatever. You're right. But I still wanna know."

"How come?" Phineas asked, curious. He twirled his remote absent-mindedly in a hand.

Cody grunted. "'Cuz now it's gonna be eating me up inside anyway."

Phineas grinned. "That's just what I would've said. Ferb, if you would be so kind as to direct us to Cody's elementary days?"

Ferb gave him a thumbs-up and pulled a lever.

Instantly everyone was thrown to the floor as the Time Dome began spinning.


	15. ULTRA IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE! READ NOW!

**So, this is where you're going, "Is Doverstar interrupting the story AGAIN? I don't wanna hear this! What happens NEXT?" Maybe. Or you're content to listen to my awkward me-to-you notes and updates. Dude, I wish had a Journal like DA did so I could just tell you in a Journal and not in a fic, but alas, this is how I do it when there's no Journal option. **

**Sorry to disappoint, guys! I know, this should be the next chapter of _It's About Time_, but as you can probably see (you're smart enough, I'm sure) it's, um, not. It's not. Sorry!  
**

**(As a side note, I realized when I gave this fic its title that the show already had an episode with the same name, but I wracked my two brain cells too hard to come up with it to change it! :D)  
**

**Okay, this is tough to say, but here goes: I am _not _doing well with this one-hour thing. Not nearly enough time to write and draw and update what I need to, you know? So in the words of a favorite old Disney Channel cartoon of mine, here's the sitch:**

**I am only gonna be on this flippin' computer in order to listen to music while I draw and to write my Disney novel. That's it. That's all. I'm mixed about it, you see, but I have to. I'm losing the battle! My SWO counselors said I'd be attacked when I got home with what I was convicted about, and I'm being attacked and it's not working out the way I thought it would. So I'll take a week off of fanfictioning (because that's mainly what consumes my time) and just write my novel whenever I get on. Because, unfortunately, as fun as these fanfics are to write, they're not gonna matter when I'm a dreaded grown-up. Physically, of course, but inside I'll always be like 12 years old or something unfathomably immature like that. (No offense to 12-year-old readers; you guys are awesomely immature! It's more fun that way, right? ^^)  
**

**Raaaaaaaaambling! Okay, well, I'll be back on fanfictioning in a week, next Wednesday, the 18th of July! All right? I'm really sorry about this, but I need this time away. I suck. I know. I know what it's like to wait on a lazy author, and I told myself I'd never be lazy, but I have been, and yet right now it's more a matter of my idolatry with fanfictioning, spending my time unwisely and all that. So bear with me, okay? I'll still be running Ask the OCs while you wait, so try to ask the characters about the things that happened to them in the stories too, okay? Okay. Are we all good? Tell me your deep thoughts, my kind readers! :) ~Doverstar  
**


	16. Chapter 14

**(Author's Note: Well, what do you know, a new chapter right on time, the day I'm off my break from fanfictioning. How do I do it? ...Music. I have to listen to a lot of motivational music. _Eye of the Tiger _and all that.  
**

**Just kidding.  
**

**I'm glad to be back! Anyway, if any of you have read the Artemis Fowl book series, the last book came out on the 10th and I've already read it! If you have too, you'll probably know just why I bawled my eyes out at the last few chapters. No spoilers for my friend Cartega, who is on the _Atlantis Complex _and has not yet finished it, therefore isn't ready for the _Last Guardian _to be spoiled. Okay, well, I'm very pleased to give you the next chapter, although I must say some of you were probably expecting how this would turn out. Since reading the Arty book, I'm a little melancholy, so I guess it might come out in my writing today.** **~Doverstar)**

* * *

The Danville group had landed, most of them face-first, on the run-down, dried-out-grassy yard of Cody's 11-year-old home. Several of them let out moans and groans, but it was Valia who popped up first.

Valia raised her hand. "Who's alive?"

Galan, Buford, and Baljeet all sat up and stretched up their hands.

"So I guess the rest of 'em's dead," Buford conceded.

"I like how you sound like you don't care," Galan told him, spitting grass.

"Just sayin'."

Isabella sat up next, rubbing her head. "Ugh..."

Phineas joined them in the land of the living, Ferb just behind him. "You okay?" he asked Isabella, concerned.

"I'm fine," Isabella told him sweetly. "I think I bruised something, though."

"Think I bruised my everything," Autumn added, pushing hair out of her face.

"That makes two of us," Cody grunted, brushing dead grass off of his jacket. "Let's never do that again, okay? Okay." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Joy. My nose will be forever changed."

"A bad landing makes for a learning experience upon the moment of the next takeoff," Ferb told them simply, head raising.

"Yeah, and it wasn't even that bad a landing," Phineas chimed, grinning at his stepbrother gratefully.

Everyone gave him unimpressed looks.

"I mean..." Awkwardly Phineas searched for something different to dwell on. He found a pathetic outlet. "Ferb, there's grass in your hair."

"How can you tell?" wondered Isabella.

Ferb shook his head like a dog, and several pieces of what had seemed like more locks of green hair fluttered away, revealing themselves to be grass blades in disguise. The British teen held up a thumb to Phineas in consent.

"On the bright side," Phineas stood up, looking giddy at the mention of his favorite side of opinions, "we're here at the perfect time. 3:15 PM, right, Cody?"

"Exactly." Cody could not help feel a shiver of dread go through him. He knew now, to a very small extent, how Autumn must have felt. The past was better left behind them, where it belonged, not doing the Chicken Dance right in their faces.

"So now all we have to do is sit back and watch," Phineas announced, sitting back down. "Nobody can see us; make yourselves comfortable."

Everyone sat in a line, watching the house.

Several minutes ticked by. Baljeet was constantly checking his watch, forgetting most of the time that it had stopped and its functions had been left in the present. Galan was smothering a laugh while Valia was using a grass blade to tickle a napping Buford's face. The bully had immediately and animatedly hit the ground snoring as soon as Phineas had given the invitation to get comfortable. Time traveling took it out of you, apparently. Isabella was sitting with her arms around her drawn-up knees, watching Phineas sketch in the notebook that never left his person. Ferb was playing a complicated, self-aware game he had created himself on his phone. The object of the game was to read whatever various quote that came onscreen and name the person who had said it in the space of 3.2 seconds. He was currently beating his own high score. Autumn was sitting in the grass, resting her weight on her palms, all while trying desperately to think of a way to convince her best friend/on-and-off boyfriend that it was not her fault his mother had died. Just your average 16-year-old train of thought. Speaking of the troubled youth, Cody Bannister was the only one really keeping his eyes completely on the property in front of him. He was running this particular scene of his life through his mind over and over again, trying to pinpoint exactly when his younger self would race into the eventually-broken-into home.

In the end, it was Valia who spotted anything of interest first.

"Omigosh, look, guys, cat burglar!"

Buford reared into a sitting position; she had dropped her teasing grass blade in her excitement and it had gone into his mouth. He awakened instantly and came up faking death by sod.

Ferb squinted and saw nothing to match the description of her statement. "A cat burglar," he told her helpfully, "is a thief who enters a structure by climbing into an upper story. This house has nothing but a first floor." He went back to his phone game.

"Okay, then fish burglar!"

They all stared at her, even Phineas, who was engrossed in his drawing.

Valia stared back. "Fish can't climb."

"What did you see and where did you see it?" Cody demanded.

"There! Right there! The bushes, see? By the trees. By the house. In the bushes. Right there."

"Yeah, I get it." Cody shaded his eyes with a hand and narrowed them for a better view.

Sure enough, there was a silhouette of a human being ducking and popping back up behind the browning bushes in the afternoon sunlight. The figure was tall, nearly adult.

"Ten bucks says it's a girl," Buford elbowed Baljeet.

"I am not gambling with you," Baljeet scoffed. "And it is clearly a boy." He folded his arms certainly.

"You can tell from here?" Buford raised an eyebrow. "How do you spend yer free time, Nerd?"

Baljeet grunted, exasperated, and didn't answer.

"Sh!" Isabella put a finger to her lips, sitting up straight.

When the figure came into full view, sneaking around from the side of the house and edging along to duck underneath the front window, Autumn shot to her feet, closely followed by a livid Cody Bannister.

"We can't know for sure from here..." Phineas began weakly, in an attempt to reassure them.

He failed utterly. Autumn put a hand to her mouth. "It can't be. No way."

"This feels like a bad sitcom," grumbled Buford.

Isabella elbowed him in the gut as usual. "Hush!"

"I told you it was a boy," sneered Baljeet.

"Too bad ya didn't wanna gamble, then, huh?" Buford growled back.

"Shut up!" Isabella snapped.

They both glanced at her in surprise.

Isabella smoothed her skirt and looked away, embarrassed by her own non-sweet outburst.

Cody was glaring at the figure like he could walk up and strangle him. "If he can't see me, then it's fine if I go up and throw him into the neighbor's rosebushes, right?"

"Only if I can help you," Galan told him, looking uncharacteristically ready to smack someone. Apparently he wasn't fond of thieves either.

"You can't touch him," Phineas explained, seeming a bit relieved that there was no chance of physical violence. "I think your arm would pass right through."

"Like in movies?" Buford raised an eyebrow.

"Sort of. Only it would probably hurt a lot," answered Phineas, rubbing his chin, sounding fascinated with his own answer, as if there were more to it.

"Like how?" pressed Buford, interested. If it involved pain to himself, inflicted by himself, there was a chance of a pack of Victory Gum as a celebration of his own fearless brawn afterward.

"Like an electrical current forcing itself through your system one excruciating inch at a time, sending spams throughout every fiber of your limb," Ferb cut in calmly, saying it as if he were a zoo keeper explaining how a monkey's lower jaw worked.

Buford shuddered; suddenly the Victory Gum was no longer calling to him.

Cody gritted his teeth as the anonymous thief crept up onto the front porch of his old house. "It would be worth it."

"Don't," Autumn said, trying to sound as strong as ever, but her voice trembled.

Cody shot her a glare that would have kept her mouth closed for a considerably long time, if she weren't feeling so inclined to try and explain away what she was seeing.

The thief reached for the door handle. He jiggled it; it was locked. Quickly he grabbed a rock, took two steps back, and tossed it into the window. Cody had to be restrained by Ferb and Buford; his eyebrows sunk low over sizzling amber irises. A moment later the figure had kicked down the door, the screen busted in.

Autumn heard Mrs. Bannister let out a scream inside. The thief ran out a moment later, carrying a box of some kind.

Cody wrenched his arms free from Buford and Ferb.

"You need anger managment, dude!" Buford shouted.

"Cody," began Autumn. "It's not his..."

"I'm not blaming _him_," Cody snarled, turning around to walk toward the Time Dome, shoulder bumping Autumn so harshly that she nearly staggered.

Phineas watched Cody enter the Dome and said, stammering, "W-W-We can't be sure it was...I mean..."

"It was," Autumn cut him off bitterly.

"It's not your fault either," Isabella told her as she and Valia flanked Autumn in order to comfort their fellow female.

"What, you expect him to believe that?" Autumn jerked her head toward the Time Dome, clearly referring to Cody.

"It doesn't matter so much whether _he _believes it or not," Ferb folded his arms.

Autumn bent her head stubbornly. "It _is _my fault. If I hadn't said a word to that stupid officer..."

"You'd be worse off." Galan finished for her sternly. "That's what would happen. It's _not _your fault. _You _didn't break into the house. Don't let him make you think that. Cody's a jerk sometimes."

"Cody's got a right to be a jerk," Autumn told him, head jerking up to glare at the Walker boy. "His mom would be alive if I wasn't such an idiot."

"That's not true!" Valia piped up, stamping her foot in frustration. "Uh, hello, are you even listening to a word everybody's saying? You didn't do this!"

"I basically did," Autumn argued. "And now I have to go apologize."

No one knew what to say to this. How could they tell her not to say she was sorry, if it was what she thought was the right thing to do? So she hadn't physically had any part to play in this bit of Cody's history. What if she really was the cause? The alternate manifestation of the Bannister boy proved that she was, at the very least to a medium degree.

Slowly, one by one, each with a sympathetic gesture of some kind to the crushed teenage girl, the Danville gang went into the Time Dome, having discovered what they'd wanted. None of them were so sure it had been the best idea now, especially Phineas. The redhead was in turmoil inwardly. More trouble and devastation caused by one of his inventions. Really, what was fun about traversing a time stream? How was this worthwhile to summer? It was a contest entry being tested by a bunch of vulnerable young human beings. Things were being brought to people's attention that should never have been there in the first place. Things were said that could have been avoided if he'd just left well enough alone. But he always had to drag his friends into his adventures. He should have been satisfied with Ferb. Why hadn't he been? He was always content if only he had his stepbrother by his side. What made him hunger for more companionship on this ruthless, dangerous endeavor of an invention test? Was it because Ferb had been so incredibly preoccupied for most of the summer with his girlfriend? Did Phineas long for someone as a fallback, a Plan B to spend his summer break with and couldn't decide on who, therefore brought them all along? Not the smartest plan. Besides, no one could replace Ferb. And there was more at stake here than his friendship with his brother. Cody and Autumn's relationship, for example. None of this was making anything better. Heart heavy, Phineas lead the way back into the Time Dome.

Before following the group, Autumn took one last look back at the spot where her older brother Adam had raced into the bushes. Then she sighed, shoved her hands into her pants' pockets, and trudged up the ramp.


	17. Chapter 15

Cody raised his head as Autumn came in and Phineas started up the Dome, setting the coordinates for home: the present time.

Autumn opened her mouth to begin, then closed it again and tried to think of a better way. Cody watched her warily, eyebrows low over his large amber eyes.

Phineas was trying not to be nosy, but eavesdropping was easy when they didn't have a room to walk out of or a corner to talk together in. Besides, every voice in the Time Dome echoed. Isabella and Ferb joined him, Isabella starting a whispered conversation about nothing in particular to distract her boyfriend from Autumn and Cody's interaction. Ferb kept one eye on the two, though, while Baljeet and Buford sat against a wall with Valia and Galan, twiddling their thumbs and trying to pretend they weren't there.

"So...I guess breaking and entering runs in the family." Cody muttered finally.

"Yeah. Guess so." Autumn grunted. "I don't know why he did it..."

"I figured."

"So why are you mad?"

Cody glared at her. "Because I have grass all over my jacket." He scoffed. "Get a clue. You saw what happened. My mom might be alive today if you hadn't..."

"Hadn't what?" Autumn stopped being sympathetic and went for defensive. "Tried to protect the only family I have?"

"The family that ruins other people's lives by breaking the law? _That _family?"

"Yeah, _that _family! You're lucky you even had a mom who cared enough to _stick _with you!" Autumn snapped, folding her arms. "So she was sick, yeah, so she didn't have a lot of time left, okay, but she _cared_. Don't you think I can guess how much she meant to you? She spent every day with you! She didn't ditch when times got rough. Mine did."

"Oh, cry me a river," Cody sneered brutally. "At least she's still _alive_, you could see that much from this stupid machine."

Phineas visibly flinched. Isabella put a hand on his shoulder.

"Adam probably turned out like that _ because _of what happened to us!" Autumn shot back. "It's not his fault!"

"Oh, it's not?" Cody turned to face her fully, hands clenched into fists at his side as he stormed toward the teenage girl, stopping several feet in front of her. "So he accidentally started breaking into houses worth nothing."

"I don't _know_! I wasn't _there_!"

"Maybe if you _had _been..."

"I'd have never met _you_," Autumn shouted, "and we wouldn't _be _here, and your mom would still be _alive_, and I could be with my _real _family right now in that Park! With_out _you! So maybe I _will _change everything! Would _that _be better?"

Cody opened his mouth to reply, but nothing would come out. He processed what she had said for two seconds, made a frustrated series of noises and scoffs and snorts, and turned around as if to walk away, then turned right back around, began to say something, then shoved both hands through his hair and made another irritated, unidentifiable sound while his messy hair fell back into place and finally turned his back on her, hands in his jacket pocket, refusing to speak.

It was quite a tantrum.

Autumn wasn't feeling triumphant, though. It was as close as she was going to get to another bout of angry tears. Never had she been so emotional as she was today. Because of everything that had happened, obviously. How annoying.

There was a shuffle of feet. Suddenly Valia was in between them.

"Okay, time out, freeze, stop, everybody shut up," Valia commanded.

Again, all eyes swiveled to the purple-wearing blonde.

_She sounds like Candace, _Phineas thought, with a sudden pang of homesickness. He was ready to get back to the present and avoid all the unhappy feelings surrounding him.

"You," Valia grabbed Autumn's arm, forcing her to stop folding them both, and pulled her toward Cody, "tell him why it's not your fault. Go on."

Cody grunted. "I already _know _it's not her fault," he said, almost pouting.

"Oh good. So then _you_," Valia stepped around until she was standing in front of the brown-haired boy, "turn around, say you're sorry."

Cody looked surprised. "For what?"

"Being such a big chunk of awful to her."

"I wasn't..." Cody blinked. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. I was."

Valia nodded and gestured to Autumn. "Get! Go!"

Cody turned around and looked at his feet. He mumbled an apology.

Phineas smothered a grin. He looked exactly like Jeremy's kid sister Suzy when she sulked.

Autumn seemed amused, too. "What was that?" She cupped a hand around her ear.

Valia stepped away for a moment and stepped back in view with a megaphone, handing it to Cody.

Galan glanced at Buford and Baljeet, confused, as if asking where his friend had gotten the sound tool. They both shrugged.

Cody glanced down at the megaphone in his hand, baffled. He then gave a knowing smirk, held it up, and said into it loudly, pointing it right at Valia, "_Go away_!"

Valia's hair fluttered in the blast and she staggered backward, palms up. "Right. Right right. Going." She back up against the wall and sat beside Galan.

Phineas and Isabella outright laughed while Ferb snickered into a hand softly. Buford sneered.

Cody dropped the megaphone and crossed his arms. "Sorry."

"You're forgiven." Autumn rubbed an arm awkwardly.

"Our lives are okay the way they are now," Cody went on. "I don't...uh, I don't blame you for what happened to me. You had it rougher anyway."

Autumn hugged him. "We _both _had it rough."

Valia elbowed Galan. Galan elbowed her back. "Nice job," he smirked.

"I should have a talk show," Valia insisted.

Galan spread his palms. "'Dr. Megaphone!'"

"The past is better left behind us," Ferb announced, holding up a finger. "The Bible says that each day has enough trouble of its own."

"Focus on the present," Phineas chimed in, giving them all a smile. "And speaking of the present, we're almost home!"

The group on the wall let out a cheer and Cody and Autumn just looked incredibly relieved.

_And right now_, Phineas reflected, _the present's cooler than everything else anyway. Past or future._

* * *

**(Author's Note: UNBEARABLY SHORT, I know, but right now it's getting to the point where this fanfic has to END, because I've fit in every scene I wanted in there now, and each OC has their background explained. So...yeah, the next chapter will have to be the last. Then I'll put another Author's Note at the end to let you know about my next PnF fic. Deal? ~Doverstar)  
**


	18. Chapter 16: End

Cody and Autumn spent the next night at the Park. In the present. In Danville. _Finally_. Back to how it used to be, taking midnight strolls together, just the two of them, to have fun and drop all their worries, each hanging out with their best friend.

Cody glanced sideways at her as they walked. "You okay?"

"Not really." Autumn stopped. "I keep getting nightmares."

"Welcome to my world."

"No," Autumn huffed a half-laugh. "It's different." She held up a palm. "Not worse, I'm pretty sure, but different."

"No, they're probably worse," Cody grunted. "I wasn't beaten as a kid." Not physically, anyway.

Autumn nodded glumly. She sighed. "Think Phineas is still torn up about the machine?"

"Hell get over it." Cody shrugged.

"He was trying to decide whether to take it to that contest this year or take it _apart_," Autumn reminded him.

"He'll get over it."

Autumn rolled her eyes. "Nice to see you so worried."

"I'll get over it."

She elbowed him and he smirked.

"Are we visiting Bartholomew or are we playing Pleasantries tonight?" Autumn yawned.

"Tired?"

"Nightmares."

"Huh." Cody kept walking. "What if we try something different?"

"Like what?"

"I dunno. Think of something."

"My brain is melting."

"I have that effect on girls."

Autumn laughed. "No, you goof, I'm exhausted."

"Me too."

"So why aren't we going home?"

"Nightmares."

"Huh."

They continued to walk for a while until Cody suddenly stopped. "What if we climb?"

"What? Climb what?" Autumn stopped with him.

"That tree." Cody pointed to the large oak hanging over a gazebo.

"Why would we do that?" Autumn yawned again.

"I'm gonna pull a Phineas here and say, why not?" Cody raised an eyebrow.

"You win. Too tired to argue." Autumn stretched and followed him to the trunk of the tree.

"C'mon." Cody climbed the first branch and continued, seemingly knowing where to put each foot and both hands.

Autumn scrambled up after him. "You know I haven't done this in years, right?"

"Feelin' old?"

"Hardly. Move yourself, your foot is in my face."

Cody smirked down at her and crawled onto a thicker branch, offering her a hand. Autumn rolled her eyes, exasperated, but smirked back and took it. He pulled her up beside him and they crouched there together on the long oak's arm.

"Now what, tough guy?" Autumn puffed.

Cody didn't reply, moving out along the branch.

Autumn let out a short, brisk laugh. "Wha...Cody, what are you doing? It's not gonna hold you."

Cody continued to edge forward, ignoring her warnings.

Autumn watched him with interest.

"I got it." Cody assured her, still in a crouching position as he moved. The branch swayed. Autumn gripped it tighter.

"Wait, stop, this branch is like half-dead."

Cody snorted. He grabbed the branch with both hands, then jumped off and hung there. As soon as his full weight was swinging, the branch immediately snapped.

_Crack!_

"Cody!" Autumn gasped, startled. It was a bit of a drop.

Seconds later, Cody was on the roof of the gazebo, half of the branch broken beside him. He rubbed his head. "I have skills," he told her, as if surprised by the fact.

"Need I remind you," Autumn jeered with a dry look, "That branch is like half-dead. I'm coming down!"

She dropped down beside him, her heart rocketing to her throat in the fall.

"My landing was better than yours," Autumn teased.

"I did this on _purpose_," Cody told her, rubbing his fingernails on his shirt and observing them vainly.

"Oh yeah?"

Cody nodded and leaned sideways toward her so that their heads were closer, getting a better view from her position. He pointed upward. "Look."

Autumn followed his finger. She blinked. "Yeah?"

"Stars."

She glanced at him, confused. He was still watching the sky. "Okay. So?"

Cody had a funny look on his face. He mumbled something.

Autumn raised both eyebrows at him. "You feeling okay?"

"I'm fine." Cody brought up his knees and crossed both arms on top of them. "They're always there, you know."

"Constant, yeah, I've heard." Autumn lowered her eyelids. "What's your point?"

"Phineas told me a couple times he'd be there for me 'always'. Like the stars." Cody grunted.

"He did?" Autumn said softly. "That was cool of him."

Cody nodded. "Before I moved when I was, like, six, he said he'd still be there."

"He wasn't. I remember."

Cody ignored that statement as if she hadn't said it. "He kept his word."

Autumn was confused. "No, he didn't. He left you hanging for like ten years."

Cody glanced at her. The moon was reflected in his eyes. "Maybe not then. He didn't know then. He forgot."

Autumn grunted, leaning backward on her palms. "People usually do."

Cody lowered his eyelids and raised one brow. "Yeah? Is that what you think your family did?"

"What family?" Autumn scoffed. "Cody, I don't even know where my Mom and Adam _are_. They left. That's not family."

"Yeah. But you said..."

"I know. Family because we're related, whatever. They don't know where I am. They probably don't even care. Family is people who care. They _don't _care about me."

Cody leaned back with her and shrugged one shoulder. He said in a casual tone, "I don't know. I think they do. What if they're looking for you?"

Autumn's head came up. "_Looking _for me?"

Cody nodded.

"They're not _here_. They haven't found me yet, even if they _are_ looking." Autumn now brought her knees up and rested her chin on them.

"Until they find you," Cody said slowly, "you've still got family here."

Autumn glanced at him. She smiled. "I do, huh?"

"Phineas. Ferb. Izzie, Galan, Valia. Baljeet. Even Buzz Cut."

"And you," Autumn pointed out.

"Yeah." Cody gave her a crooked smile. "And me. And I'm stickin' with you. You're not getting rid of me."

"Sticking with me?" Autumn seemed vulnerable, as if afraid to believe him suddenly. "All the time?"

"All the time." Cody stared at her. "Like the stars."

* * *

**3 Months Later...  
**

"Next up, we have...Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher, with...what is this, a camera?" The judge at the science fair squinted.

Phineas patted what looked like an ordinary video camera on its metal stilts. "To the untrained eye," he said mildly. "But really it's able to take 100,0000 pictures in the space of a second. Just with the press of a button."

"Outstanding!" the judge exclaimed. "Any chance you could, mm, prove it, young man?"

"Kid," Phineas corrected.

Ferb fought a smile.

"Kid." The judge looked surprised. "Eh, right."

"Sure. Hey, you guys, come here a second!" Phineas cupped his hands around his mouth.

Cody, Autumn, Galan, Buford and Baljeet were all watching Valia mimicking a mime that was passing by in order to entertain the fair-goers.

Isabella stood beside Phineas hands on her hips. When the gang didn't respond, she whistled through two fingers.

The group looked up.

"Anybody up for a photo or two?" Phineas folded his arms and grinned at them.

"Only if you get my good side," Cody joked, hands in his pockets as he led the teens over to the Flynn-Fletcher booth.

"What good side?" Galan teased. He glanced at Valia. "The mime's gone."

Valia was pretending to go down a flight of steps behind the booth now, so that only the upper half of her body was shown.

"You're quite talented at that," Ferb mused.

"Be right back." Valia pretended to fully disappear down the imaginary flight of stairs. To the others' confusion they actually heard a door slam from what seemed like a long way down, and Valia reappeared, panting. "You do _not _wanna go in there."

Galan cackled.

Autumn elbowed Cody. "This is the weirdest _family _I have ever been apart of."

"Just wait until Thanksgiving," Cody grunted.

"Har har."

"Okay, guys, group picture!"

Phineas stood a few feet away from the camera and Ferb and Isabella flanked him, Ferb folding his arms with Phineas and going back-to-back with his stepbrother, a sly, mischevious smile on his rectangular face, eyes half-closed, while Phineas continued to grin impishly. Isabella had her arm around Autumn, who was giving Cody bunny ears. Cody was in the usual hands-in-jacket-pocket pose while smirking. Galan and Valia were frozen in the miming pose of being trapped inside an invisible box. Baljeet would have been smiling brightly at the camera had Buford not choked him in a headlock at the last second.

"Say Time Dome!" Phineas shouted.

Everyone dropped their poses and groaned immediately. It was the first picture the camera took.

They resumed their poses as soon as they realized the contraption wasn't finished.

The camera snapped exactly the right number of pictures as the group began posing in several different ways and styles.

When they were finished, the machine shot out each picture perfectly, displaying them for the Danville gang and the judges to see.

"My eyes were closed. Galan, look. Closed. Rats."

"Cody, your _face_!"

"Nice red-eye in this one, Ferb. Hey, why isn't there a purple-eye effect? Or better yet, orange? I know what we're gonna do today!"

"Buford! Must you cause me physical pain in every picture?"

"It's called makin' memories, Nerd!"

"Kodak moment. Right there. See how 'Jeet's eyes are buggin' out?"

"Ugh!"

"Awww, Autumn, look at you!"

"You were giving me moose antlers! Izzie!"

"How do you _still _look like a surfer hippie in every picture, Walker?"

"You don't take the best photos yourself, Bannister. Are those Bambi eyes you're giving Autumn?"

"No. They're clearly Faline eyes."

"Ha!"

"Hey, Valia, look at this one."

"Ooh! Hee, look, Phineas' hair is sticking up."

"It's always sticking up. Lemme see."

"Ferb, is it just me, or is one of your eyes bigger than the other?"

"That _would _be something."

"My headband was falling out in that one."

"That's the one where Cody stole my hat, too!"

"Purple looks pretty good on you, tough guy."

"I'll keep that in mind when I try out for the next Willy Wonka movie."

"I _hate _this one. I'm ripping it."

"No don't! Blackmailing rights! Ha ha!"

"Buford, give it back!"

"Ya snooze ya loose, Karmer!"

"Hand it over, Buzz Cut."

"Thanks for the support, Cody."

"No, I just wanna see what you hate about it. Give it here, Buf'."

"_What_? Don't!"

Soon everyone was chasing Buford for the picture.

"This is goin' online!"

"Not a chance!"

The judges watched them, perplexed. One of them glanced at the other.

"Whaddaya think, Dan? Winners?"

"I dunno, Jeff. Count the pictures."

"I'm too lazy. Let's just blue ribbon 'em now and get it over with. It's the only interesting thing we've seen all day."

"Fair enough."

The blue ribbon was left unnoticed on the invention.

Meanwhile the Danville group had ended up in a heap in the grass, laughing so obnoxiously that they attracted more than a few stares from passers-by.

Autumn looked around while laughing. So she wasn't related to them.

_This _was family.


	19. Last Author's Note

**Alrighty, need ideas for the next Phineas and Ferb fanfic. We already know that the OCs will _not _have the spotlight in the next one. Cody and Autumn may make a cameo. By the way, in the last chapter of this fic I was listening to _Keep Holding On _by Avril Lavigne while writing it and reading it over, in case you wanted to follow my lead. Just a nice suggestion. **

**Anyway, over at deviantART I have an Alvin and the Chipmunks fic to get halfway through before I start the next Phineas and Ferb fic _here_, so give me until Wednesday to start the next PnF fic. So I can catch up on my Munk fanfic, all right? Sorry for more waiting, but that's how it's gonna be.  
**

**Thanks for sticking with me so long, guys. I know I get annoying and lazy, but you're usually right there to read whatever junk I throw at you, however obscenely short, so I seriously appreciate your positive feedback and helpful tips. You rock!  
**

**Any requests for the next Phineas and Ferb fic? What do you wanna see? ~Doverstar  
**


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